Course Description

How to secure computing systems, communications, and users. Basic cryptography; private and authenticated communication; software security; malware; operating system protection; network security; web security; physical security; cryptocurrencies and blockchains; privacy and anonymity; usable security; economics of security; ethics of security; legal and policy issues.

Staff and office hours

Maria Apostolaki (she/her)
Instructor
Prof. Maria Apostolaki (she/her)
apostolaki@princeton.edu
Office hours: By appointment

Prateek Mittal (he/his)
Instructor
Prof. Prateek Mittal (he/his)
pmittal@princeton.edu
Office hours: By appointment

Sophie Dai (she/her)
Assistant Instructor
Sophie Dai (she/her)
sihuid@princeton.edu
Office hours: T 4-6PM, Friend 010

Gerald Huang (he/his)
Assistant Instructor
Gerald Huang (he/his)
gh14@princeton.edu
Office hours: MW 5-6PM, Friend 010

Watson Jia (he/his)
Assistant Instructor
Watson Jia (he/his)
watsonj@princeton.edu
Office hours: MW 3-4PM, Friend 010

Ashwinee Panda (he/his)
Assistant Instructor
Ashwinee Panda (he/his)
ashwinee@princeton.edu
Office hours: Th 12:30-2:30PM, Friend 010

Rohan Prabhakar (he/his)
Assistant Instructor
Rohan Prabhakar (he/his)
rohanbp@princeton.edu
Office hours: MW 9:30-10:30AM, Friend 010

TBA
Undergraduate Assistant/Grader
Dennis Jacob (he/his)
djacob@princeton.edu
Office hours: TBA

TBA
Undergraduate Assistant/Grader
Jeremy Kiil (he/his)
jkiil@princeton.edu
Office hours: TBA

TBA
Undergraduate Assistant/Grader
Kenneth Poor (he/his)
kgpoor@princeton.edu
Office hours: TBA

It is almost always more appropriate to post your question about the assignments, lectures, or other course materials on Ed rather than emailing an individual staff member.


Calendar


Textbook

There is no required or suggested textbook in this course, because there is no one book that covers the right material in an up-to-date fashion. Some good books about security, in case you are interested, are listed on the Resources page.

Lectures

Lectures meet on Tuesday and Thursday 9:30am - 10:50am in Friend 101.

Assignments Policy

Some assignments are individual assignments while other assignments must be done in groups (of two or three partners).

Assignments that are submitted after the specified due date will lose 10% of the full assignment grade for every day (or partial day) of lateness.

However, you do have three (3) late days, and you may use one or more of these late days on an assignment. Each late day taken will extend the due date of the submission by 24 hours. For group assignments, you may use X late days if and only if all group members can use X late days on the assignment. You may not use partial late days, and we will not apply late days automatically in this course since not all assignments are individual assignments. If you wish to use late days on a submission, you must explicitly note that with your submission. Please submit a LATEDAY.txt file with your submission and state "I/We would like to use X late day(s) on this assignment."

We won't accept homework more than seven days late, and we will grant extensions only in the case of unforeseeable circumstances like medical emergencies, as documented by your Dean or Director of Studies and our approval.

Grading

The grade breakdown is 70% assignments (equally weighted) + 25% final exam + 5% class participation. There is no midterm exam.

Collaboration Policy

This course permits many forms of collaboration, including help from course staff, classmates, and lab TAs. However, you must be careful to collaborate only as authorized below. Here is a summary, where ✔ means YES and ❌ means NO. If you have any questions, please contact the course staff.

activity your group course staff COS 432/
ECE 432
grads
classmates AI chatbots other
discuss concepts with ...
acknowledge collaboration with ...
expose solutions to ...
view solutions from ...
plagiarize code from ...

Your solutions. On individual assignments, you must individually compose all of your solutions. The term solutions refers to any of the products created when completing a programming assignment, such as source code (including comments) and any text files. It includes both finished and unfinished products, regardless of correctness or completeness.

Working Groups. Some assignments require you to work in groups. Here are the rules regarding group work.

Why Work in Groups? There are several reasons for our decision to make you work in groups.

A note about StackExchange, Wikipedia, and online forums. Many of the topics in this course require self-teaching. This includes a lot of searching online for documentation and information about algorithms, technologies, and techniques. Unfortunately, this includes a wide gray area between learning and plagiarism. Don't be afraid of searching for and using online resources that teach you how to do something that is not a direct requirement of an assignment.

For example, you are free to find and implement a method that converts integers to byte arrays in an assignment about cryptography; just make sure to cite your source and thoroughly understand the implementation, as your graders will not be lenient with copied code that is buggy. If you find yourself searching for implementations of a security-related algorithm, then you are likely violating the collaboration policy. When you are unsure, ask one of the staff members.

Plagiarism. As members of the University community, students are bound by the rules and procedures described in Rights, Rules, Responsibilities.

All the rules above continue to apply after assignments are graded and after the end of the semester.