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

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 11:00am - 12:20pm. The lecture Zoom link will be available on Canvas.

Assignments Policy

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

Late assignments will lose 10% of its value for every day of lateness. Homework more than seven days late will not be accepted.

Late assignment penalties will be waived only in the case of unforeseeable circumstances like medical emergencies, as documented by your Dean or Director of Studies and our approval.

Exams

The course does not have a midterm exam, and does have a final exam. More information about the final exam will be announced at a later date.

Grading

Grades will be computed by the following formula: 70% assignments (equal weight) + 25% final exam + 5% class participation.

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/ ELE 432 grads	classmates	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 the readme.txt file. It includes both finished and unfinished products, regardless of correctness or completeness.

• You must never expose solutions to anyone who is taking COS 432/ELE 432 now or who might take COS 432/ELE 432 in the future.
• If you leave your computer unattended, be sure to protect it with a password.
• You must never receive or view someone else's solutions to a programming assignment (or variant of an assignment).

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

• A group must consist of either two or three people. Solutions turned in by a group of one person, or by a group of four or more people, will receive no credit.
• You can work in different groups on different assignments.
• Each group should submit a single solution, which should be clearly labeled with the names of the group's members. Only one member of the group needs to submit the group's solution. There is no need to submit redundant copies for the other members.
• The members of a group will all receive the same grade on an assignment, reflecting the quality of the group's collective solution to the assignment.
• It is up to you to divide up the work within your group, and to make sure that the other members of your group meet their commitments. (If a member of your group is consistently irresponsible, let us know and we'll take appropriate action.)
• If you have trouble finding a group, let us know and we will help you.

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

• In the real world, people work in groups. We want you to learn how.
• We think that students learn more by doing hard assignments than by doing easy ones. Giving group assignments lets us give harder assignments without overworking you.
• Security problems require you to deal with engineering tradeoffs and make difficult design decisions. We hope that you'll debate these decisions within your group, and that the debates will be educational.

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.