Instructor: Yixin Sun
TA: Elena Long (ml6vq), Saket Upadhyay (kpk2rv)
Lecture time: MW 2-3:15
Location: MEC 341
Office hours: TBD
This course investigates security and privacy issues that stem from the Internet infrastructure. We will cover topics such as BGP security, DNS security, DDoS attacks, and anonymous communications. We will also look at various mechanisms to secure the Internet infrastructure as well as privacy enhancing technologies. Note that this course will involve literature review and paper presentation/discussion.
No formal prerequisites, but assumes basic familiarity with programming in languages like C and Python. Some background in computer networks (e.g., equivalence of CS4457) will be helpful.
| Dates | Topic | Paper | Notes |
| Mon 1/13 | Intro/Network Architecture | - | Classes start |
| Wed 1/15 | HTTP and TLS | - | |
| Mon 1/20 | (No class, MLK day) | - | |
| Wed 1/22 | TCP/UDP | - | |
| Mon 1/27 | IP | - | OH start |
| Wed 1/29 | Internet scanning | - | HW1 out |
| Mon 2/3 | Routing | - | |
| Wed 2/5 | Routing | IPv6 scan | Paper presentation starts |
| Mon 2/10 | DNS | SICO | |
| Wed 2/12 | DNS | RPKI | HW1 due (2/14) |
| Mon 2/17 | DNS | Cache poisoning | HW2 out |
| Wed 2/19 | DDoS | KeyTrap | |
| Mon 2/24 | Certificate | DNS amplification | |
| Wed 2/26 | Certificate | DDoS and BGP | |
| Mon 3/3 | Secure programmable data plane | Certificate misissuance | |
| Wed 3/5 | TCP attacks | Certificate pinning | HW2 due (3/7) |
| Mon 3/10 | (Spring break) | - | |
| Wed 3/12 | (Spring break) | - | |
| Mon 3/17 | Anomymity systems | Jaqen | |
| Wed 3/19 | (Guest lecture) | - | |
| Mon 3/24 | Censorship | Congestion control | |
| Wed 3/26 | Censorship | Tor directory | |
| Mon 3/31 | Censorship | Bandwidth attack | |
| Wed 4/2 | Anomaly detection | Snowflake | |
| Mon 4/7 | Online tracking | GFW | |
| Wed 4/9 | Privacy policy | Alexa | |
| Mon 4/14 | Project presentation | - | |
| Wed 4/16 | Project presentation | - | |
| Mon 4/21 | Project presentation | - | |
| Wed 4/23 | Project presentation | - | |
| Mon 4/28 | Project presentation | - | |
Homework assignments: 30% (2 assignments, 15% each)
Final project (presentation and report): 40%
Paper presentation and discussion: 30%
Late Policy
All assignments/reviews are due via Canvas at 11:59pm on the due date.
Grace period: 12 hours (intended to cover real issues, e.g., internet issues, server down)
Exponential decay on penalty per day late, with rate of 10%
There is no textbook for the course that you need to purchase. We will distribute materials as needed.
There are several sites, all can be found/linked from Collab:
Course website (this one): informational purpose
Canvas: Announcements, assignment submissions, course materials and recordings, Zoom links
Piazza (via Canvas): questions, notes, private messages for faculty/TA, regrade request
Please direct all course-related questions to Piazza (or go to office hours). If you want to discuss other topics or have personal/team issues that can and should only be handled by a professor, please email me directly (ys3kz).
Please also read the course syllabus carefully for additional information
You must cite any and every source you consult, other than those explicitly provided by the course itself. This includes talking with a friend/classmate or looking at a website/book. If you're unsure, please ask us. We run all submissions through a plagiarism checker by default.
All assignments are individual work and there is no collaboration allowed. That means you should not push it to GitHub (or any other site), send a copy to anyone, turn your screen to your neighbor, code up solutions together, etc. It is ok to discuss with classmates, but please include the names of students whom you've discussed with.
Penalties may be up to and including a failing grade (F) in the course, independent of and in addition to the operations of the Honor Code.
Ack: this section is adapted from CS 2130.