The course will cover a wide range of topics in network security and online privacy, trying to strike a balance between core concepts and recent advancements. The focus of the course will be on technologies, protocols, attacks, and defenses most closely related to the network rather than the end systems.
The main goal of the course is to provide an understanding of various network security concepts through, at times, a more adversarial way of thinking. By focusing on vulnerabilities and exploitation techniques, the course will cover a broad range of topics, including core network protocols, eavesdropping, scanning, DoS attacks, firewalls, VPNs, proxies, intrusion detection, forensics, honeypots, encrypted communication, authentication, services and applications, botnets, targeted attacks, exfiltration, privacy, anonymity. After discussing some basic security concepts, we will work a bit bottom-up starting with lower level protocols followed by the primary protocols used to make the internet ?useful? and leading up to security protocols and security measures applied to this varied collection of code.
Topics are covered from a highly practical perspective, following a mixed format of lectures, research paper discussions, and case studies. Other requirements include three or four programming assignments, one or two short research papers and two exams.