Time and Place: Th 4:50-7:20pm NAC 5/148
Instructor: William E. Skeith (WES)
Office: Shepard 279
An introduction to computer security. The student will develop the ability to reason about security in a variety of practical contexts and will learn best practices for mitigating threats and implementing secure systems. Topics will include software and hardware security, network security and protocols, operating system security, and elementary cryptography.
You are strongly encouraged to attend lectures. This will be the main source of material for the class. All lecture notes will be posted online soon after each session, so you only need to take notes if it helps you think.
There will be 2-3 written assignments and 2-3 programming assignments/labs. Time permitting, there may also be a collaborative project at the end of the term.
There will be one midterm and a final exam.
The midterm will be October 24th
The final exam will be TBA (usually it is from 6 – 8:15pm).
Cell phones, computers etc. are not allowed in exams.
There will be no make-up exams.
The final grade will be based on the best of the following:
HW/Assignments -20%, MT-35%, Final-45%,
or
HW/Assignments -30%, Final-70%.
NOTE: if you want to dive deeper into the theory, you can get drafts of Oded Goldreich’s Foundations of Cryptography here.