Week 1: Fundamentals of Computer Security What do we mean by the conce - PDF document

Week 1: Fundamentals of Computer Security What do we mean by the concept of ÔsecurityÕ when applied to information, computers, and networks? What factors affect the security of computer systems, and how are these supported or hindered through technological and human means? This lecture provides an understanding of the goals of information security, charts its development from the early insecure days of computing and the internet to the modern day. We will examine some of the key events that drove security considerations to the fore, and the institutional and community-based reactions to the challenge of securing information resources. Key Question: What is security? Seeley Ð A Tour of the Worm. http://www.thehackademy.net/madchat/vxdevl/avtech/A \_Encrypt/OReilly.pdf The Dance of Boltzmann, Coase and MooreÓ. rain.forrest.puppy Ð NT Web Technology Vulnerabilities. http://phrack.org/issues/54/8.html ¥ Computer Emergency Response Team. CERT Advisory CA96. 21: TCP SYN Flooding and IP Spoofing Attacks. https://www.cert.org/historical/advisories/CA-1996-21.cfm Yip Ð An investigation into Chinese cybercrime and the underground economy in comparison with the West. http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/273136/1.hasCoversheetVersion/dissertation\_final.pdf ¥ Miller Ð The Legitimate Vulnerability Market Inside the Secretive World of 0day Exploit Sales. http://weis2007.econinfosec.org/papers/29.pdf ¥ Caballero Ð Measuring Pay-Per-Install: The commoditization of malware distribution. and what are the limitations of this ability? Concepts: ¥ KerckhoffsÕs Principle. ¥ The existence of one-way trapdoor functions. ¥ Pseudorandom functions. ¥ Symmetric ciphers. ¥ Hash functions. ¥ Block cipher modes of operation. Readings: ¥ Schneier Ð Applied Cryptography, Second Edition. (1996). (Chapters 1-4,7,8) ¥ Christin Ð Travelling the Silk Road: A measurement analysis of a large anonymous online marketplace. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.7139v1.pdf ¥ Ron Dorit; Adi Shamir (2012). Quantitative Analysis of the Full Bitcoin Transaction Graph. http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf ¥ Bell Ð Assassination Politics. http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDF\_Books/AP.pdf Week 8: Untraceable Communications The internet was originally designed as a robust and efficient communications network, with little consideration for privacy and security. Whilst the means to protect the content of messages from untoward observation are relatively well known, this leaves the significant problem of preventing traffic analysis Ð determining information about communicating users from their patterns of interaction. This lecture explores approaches towards hiding the links between communicating parties, examines the arguments for and against online anonymity, and presents the major ideologies and groups that have driven both surveillance and privacy-enhancing technologies in the development of the modern internet. Key Question: Can internet users be anonymous, and to what extent; and should online anonymity be promoted or prevented? Concepts: ¥ Notions of identity, anonymity and pseudonymity. ¥ Traffic analysis. ¥ Remailers and Mixes o Onion routing and Tor. o Anonymity, freedom of expression, and censorship. o Privacy, trust, funding, and development methodology. Required Reading: ¥ Chaum Week 9: Censorship and Control Despite the promise of the Internet as a global communications medium, its use as a tool to filter and surveil flows of information by both governments and corporations has significant implications for freedom of expression worldwide. This lecture explores how Internet filtering affects the flow of information in both social and technical networks, and how filtering practices have developed and spread over time. We will show the main approaches to filtering and circumvention of filtering technologies, and will investigate the ways in which filtering policies and practise interact with the technical, physical, political, and social realities of the Internet. Key Question: Is the internet ultimately a tool for freedom of expression, or for control of information? Concepts: ¥ Approaches to censorship and historical context. ¥ Justification and spread of internet filtering. Deibert et al. Ð Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering. (Chapters 1 Anderson Ð The Eternity Service. http://www.ovmj.org/GNUnet/papers/eternity.ps ¥ Wright Regional Variation in Chinese Internet Filtering.