ECE 5698: Special Topics in Computer Security and Vulnerabilities

Engin Kirda

For correspondence, send a mail to ek@ccs.neu.edu

Office Hours: to be announced

1. 12.17.2012 End of class. Have a great winter break!
2. 10.31.2012 Assignments 1, 2, 3, and 4 have been released.
3. 09.10.2012 Introductory lectures have started. On Thursday, Dr. Collin Mulliner will be giving a talk.
4. 09.03.2012 Course website online.

Today, computer security problems have started to impact the practical aspects of our lives. Even though there is a considerable corpus of knowledge about tools and techniques to protect systems, information about what the actual vulnerabilities are and how they are exploited is not generally available. Also, there are many misconceptions when it comes to protecting systems.

This research-oriented, special topics course for Computer Engineering students aims to discuss and show some of the current security problems out there and discuss what scientific techniques are being developed. Besides some regular lectures, state of the art research papers will be given out to be summarized, presented and discussed by the students. The plan is also to have some programming assignments in the second half of the semester (depending on the level of the students) as well as industrial and scientific invited talks on different topics.

In summary, the course aims to make engineering students "security aware", and gain an in-depth understanding about the current, practical security topics. Also, I am hoping that the students will develop a sound, useful level of skepticism when it comes to judging existing solutions.

Some Planned Topics for Discussion

• Malware
• Web security
• Underground economy
• Social network security and fraud
• Reverse engineering and binary analysis
• Forensics
• Intrusion detection