CSE 564: Computer Security and Privacy (Winter 2015)

Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10:30am-11:50am
Location: MGH 228
Instructor: Franziska Roesner; Office Hours: CSE 654, Mondays 1:30pm-2:30pm or by appointment
Teaching Assistant: Paul Vines; Office Hours: CSE 505, most mornings/afternoons or by appointment

Catalyst forum: https://catalyst.uw.edu/gopost/board/franzi/38521/
Catalyst dropbox: https://catalyst.uw.edu/collectit/dropbox/summary/franzi/33720
Catalyst gradebook: https://catalyst.uw.edu/gradebook/franzi/90093
Course mailing list: http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/cse564a_wi15

For more information, please use the navigation bar at the top of the page.

Announcements

• 2/24/2015: Please indicate your availability for project presentations on March 16 here.
• 2/17/2015: Franzi will not hold office hours on Monday 2/23. Please feel free to stop by another time or make an appointment.
• 1/28/2015: The web attack lab is now posted here and is due in 3 weeks.
• 1/27/2015: The web attack lab will be posted shortly. Please email Paul (plvines@cs) with the members of your 1-2 person group so he can set up an account for you in the lab's system.
• 1/26/2015: Security review #2 is now optional. You can use it to replace up to 4 response posts for papers (in addition to the 4 you can already skip for free) or to replace security review #1.
• 1/13/2015: Reminder that security reviews and project groups are due on Thursday. Please email me with the names of the members of your project group.
• 1/8/2015: I've posted sample security reviews here and here.
• 1/8/2015: If you have not received messages sent to the class mailing list, please let me know and sign up for the mailing list here. You can also view the archives to see any messages that you missed at the same link.
• 1/7/2015: Slides from the first class posted here.
• 1/6/2015: Please sign up for two slots to help lead the class discussion using this Doodle poll.
• 12/26/2014: Please take the (optional) pre-course survey here.

Overview

Computer systems play a critical role in modern society. Unfortunately, there exist individuals -- including vandals and professional criminals -- who wish to compromise the security and privacy of these computer systems. Computer security is the discipline dedicated to protecting computer systems and their users from the malicious actions of adversaries. This course is designed to bring participants to the forefront of modern computer security research, thereby giving students the foundations for advancing the state-of-the-art in the field. This course also targets individuals in other fields who wish to address security and privacy in their own research.

We begin by defining the field of computer security, introducing key concepts such as adversaries, threat models, risk management, defenses, and deterrents. We then study the central themes of modern computer security research, including: human aspects; attack creation and modeling; attack detection and measurement; cryptography and communications security; system design and implementation; web and smartphone security and privacy; and side channels. Because of its strong research focus, participants in the course will read and discuss research papers, as well as conduct independent research in a topic related to computer security.