Computer Security -- EDA263/DIT641

Spring semester, study period 3, 2017/2018

 

News:

• [2018-11-16] The site for 2018/2019 is up but under constructions.
• [2018-01-15] GU students registered at the course cannot access PingPong! They are working on solving this and I hope you will have access tomorrow.
• [2018-01-08] A version of the course book is available as an e-book from the library and it will be used as the official course book. There are also printed versions to buy.
• [2018-01-08] The course will participate in the Syssec 10k challenge to increase awareness.
• [2018-01-08] The main site will be inside PingPong and we will open the site there in January 2018.
• [2018-01-08] The site for 2017/2018 is up but under constructions. Last year's homepage is found here.

Course Description

Examiner: Associate Professor Magnus Almgren, phone: 031-772 1702, email: magnus.almgren

The Computer Security course gives a broad overiew of the security area. The approach is largely technical, but the course will also address the important societal implications of security (or rather lack of security). Roughly, security deals with how to protect your system against intentional intrusions and attacks. The purpose of intrusions can be made to change or delete resourses (data, programs, hardware, etc), to get unauthorized access to confidential information or unauthorized use of the system's services. The course covers threats and vulnerabilities as well as rules, methods and mechanisms for protection. During a few lectures, a holistic security approach is taken and organizational, business-related, social, human, legal and ethical aspects are treated.

The Computer security course is the first within our Security specialization.

Recommended text book (e-book at Chalmers library)
Stallings & Brown: Computer Security,
Pearson, second edition

Course Memo

Reading Instructions

Lab Information

Course Material

The following course material is electronically available. Please note that the lecture slides alone do not give a full coverage of the course contents.

All lectures are given in HA4 Monday, Thursday and some Fridays. As per the course memo, we will only have Friday lectures for the first couple of weeks.

The lectures and other material will be uploaded to PingPong.

Lectures and slides

• Lecture 1: Introduction, Threats, Vulnerabilities, Protection
  (Mon 2018-01-15, 13-15)
  Course Introduction, Lab Intro, Vulnerabilities, threats, and protection mechanisms.
  See also "Extra reading" = ER1 below.
  
  
• Lecture 2: (1) UNIX Security, (2) Passwords, (3) Authentication, Authorization and Access Control, (4) Mobile Malware
  (Thu 2018-01-18, 10-12)
  
  
• Lecture 3: (cont'ed) (1) UNIX Security, (2) Passwords, (3) Authentication, Authorization and Access Control, (4) Mobile Malware
  (Mon 2018-01-22, 13-15)
  
  
• Lecture X: Please refer to schedule in TimeEdit and PingPong for further lectures
  
  

Extra Reading

1. Lecture 1: Here is a description of an attack and the resulting problems for a private individual. Note the difference in assumptions between Amazon and Apple regarding the privacy of the numbers of the credit card.

Course Evaluation

• Information on the process of course evaluation is found on the Course Evaluation page. Most details about the course evaluations is found in detail in pingpong.
• Introductory meeting will take place the first/second study week.
• The mid-period meeting will take place. A summary will be found online.

Examination dates 2017/2018 (preliminary)

Previous examinations

2015-04-18, 2015-03-21, 2014-03-15, 2014-01-18, 2013-08-28, 2013-03-12, 2013-01-17, 2012-08-29, 2012-03-08 + program for q5 2011-08-17, 2011-01-11, 2010-10-19, 2010-08-18, 2010-01-12, 2009-10-20

The following question from the exams above is no longer applicable: 2009-10-20 - 8c