SIL765

NETWORK AND SYSTEM SECURITY

Announcements

Description

This 4 credit course will cover topics in network and systems security & is in C SLOT.

Course Organization

 
Instructor: Anupam Joshi
Office: CSIA Lab (IIA - 311)
E-Mail Address: ajoshi@iitd.ac.in , joshi@umbc.edu
Office Hours: Walk in, or by appointment 		 TA: Chandrika Bhardwaj
Office: Verification Lab (IIA - 411)
E-Mail Address: chandrika AT cse DOT iitd DOT ac DOT in
Office Hours: Tue. Thu. 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm

Required Text: Network Security Essentials, William Stallings, 5th Edition
In addition, a number articles and notes will be made available by the instructor.

Prerequisites:

CS & EE students with UG level background in Operating Systems (CSL331(CSL373) or equivalent) and networking (CSL374(CSL334) or equivalent). The graduate students taking this course are expected to be familiar with this material. The UG students must have OS, and be prepared to catch up a bit as needed on networking concepts. Talk to the instructor if you would like to take the course, but are not sure of your background.

Course Information (or Stuff you should know up front ...)

A few noteworthy points. First, this is a course meant for CS/EE graduate students or advanced undergraduates. This course will assume that you are largely familiar with the OS basics (process management, memory management, disk management, filesystems, protection) typically taught in undergrad OS courses (such as CSL331(CSL373)). In addition, we assume that you are proficient in programming (i.e., have written more complex programs than typically assigned in CSL100/CSL101/CSL102 courses). In case your background is deficient, it is your responsibility to catch up. In class, I will assume that all students have the requisite background. Second, this is a course in the "systems" area. That means that hands on work is almost as important as theoretical knowledge, and projects will account for almost 65% of your grade. Expect to be putting in significant effort! I will expect you to follow good programming practices (commenting, headers, version control, makefiles, etc. etc.) that you have learnt in previous classes. Pop Quizzes may be given if needed to "encourage" students to read the assigned material. Such quizzes will happen randomly, and cannot be made up if missed. We plan to have multiple short quizzes throughtout the semester on a continuous basis instead of the 2 minors. We will have a major on the assigned date

As we go through the course material, several reference papers will be provided to you. For each of these papers, you will be expected to read it before we discuss it in class. A few homeworks might also be given. The initial plan is to do 5-6 projects. The first one will come out within a week or two.

We will use Sakai as a convenient tool for distributing course material and presenting other information. Sakai can be found at https://sakai.iitd.ac.in/portal . Sakai will be the primary means used to provide important announcements and news about the class, and provide links to homeworks and projects as they are released. It is your responsibility to check it often, at least several times a day. We will also communicate with you using your IITD email. If that is not where you primarily receive email, you might wish to appropriately forward it to where you do. A discussion forum will be created in Sakai. The purpose of this forum is to allow you to discuss ideas, especially as related to the project. The forum will not be monitored by the instructor or the TA, except passively. If you need to communicate with the TA or the instructor, please send an email to them with 'SIL765' as the first element of your subject line. The email of instructor is ajoshi@iitd.ac.in, and the email of TA is chandrika@cse.iitd.ac.in. Given the large enrollment in this class, we will use the following division of labor. Any questions that relate to conceptual difficulties with the material presented in the class should come to the instructor directly. All other questions should be first directed to the TA, who may then pass some of them on to the instructor.

Tentative Course Outline

This is a rough outline of the course, and subject to change as we progress through the semester. Its online counterpart will likely reflect the changes as we go along. In many of these topics, besides covering the basic material in the book, we will discuss recent advances and papers. It is your responsibility to read the material to be covered in the class ahead of time. Besides the text, references to papers will be provided via Sakai for your convenience.

We’ll quickly review concepts such as Access Control and Crypto that some of you might already know from other courses, but other students might not. We’ll then cover the following topics, in different degrees of depth.

We will use the slides provided by the publisher to anchor our discussions, but they are NOT a substitute for the discussion in the class. Neither the slides, nor the text, by themselves completely capture the material we will cover, especially the part about recent developments and cutting edge research! It is expected that you will attend, follow, and participate in the discussions in class.

The Important Stuff (i.e. grades)

Given the format of this course, attendance and class discussion are essential for the learning process. Most of the classes are virtual, and will not require your physical presence. You however do need to keep up with the online lectures, since at various points short, online quizzes will be given. We will also meet physically a few times in the semester. Those dates will be communicated to you via email and Moodle sufficiently in advance. I will not give any makeups for these quizzes. Course grades will be a function of your performance in the projects, paper summaries, quizzes, and exams, as well as of your participation in class. If you miss any lectures, it is your responsibility to find out what went on during the lecture and to collect any material that were handed out.

 The grades will be based on a curve. A tentative breakdown of grades, likely to change as we go along is

Academic Dishonesty

Academic Integrity is a key element of education. You should definitely read point 10 given on Prof. S. Arun Kumar's webpage at http://www.cse.iitd.ernet.in/~sak/courses/general.html. It elanborates on the academic conduct policy. As you have probably been told umpteen times by now, violating this policy is a strict no-no! If we catch anyone cheating, we will take the maximum action possible against them, including reporting the matter to the appropriate university authorities. Please cooperate by doing your own work and not seeking inappropriate help from your classmates. You may, of course, discuss homeworks and assignments amongst yourselves, as long as that discussion does not lead to a exchange of solutions.

Extra Help

We recognize that some of you may have disabilities that require special attention from the instructional staff. Please make us aware of them at your earliest so that IITD can make suitable arrangements as appropriate.