In this course, we will study the theoretical and practical aspects of network security. We start with an overview of cryptographic techniques and protocols and then cover network security protocols, digital
signatures and authentication protocols, network security practices and wireless network security. We will also review a set of recent research papers related to Internet security (topics including DoS defense,
virus and worms, and other related hot topics).
Learning Objectives:
1. Ability to understand the basic working principles and utilities of various cryptographic algorithms including secret key cryptography, hashes and message digests, and public key algorithms
2. Ability to understand design issues and working principles of various authentication protocols.
3. Ability to understand the design issues and working principles of various secure communication standards including Kerberos, certificate and PKI standards, IPsec, and SSL/TLS.
4. Ability to understand the issues and working principles of various protocols for e-mail security (including S/MIME and PGP).
5. Ability to understand the issues and existing solutions to various popular network security topics including denial-of-service (DoS) defense, IP traceback, intrusion detection, firewalls, and wireless
security.
6. Ability to use existing cryptographic utilities to build programs for secure communication.
Topics to be covered (tentative):
Dr. Kamil Sarac (ksarac@utdallas.edu)
Office: ES 4.207
Phone: 972 883 2337
Office hours: Mondays/Wednesdays at 12:00 noon - 1:00pm and by appointment at other times.
Name: Jinu Kurian (jinuk@student.utdallas.edu)
Office Hours: Tue 5:30 - 6:30 PM in ECS 4.201 and Thu 10.30 - 11.30 AM in the ECS Open lab 2.104
For those who want to do something more interesting than studying for an in-class exam (final exam), you will have an option of working on a research project. Students interested in this option will pick up a topic related to network security and conduct research to propose some form of contributions into the area of the selected problem. This could be developing a new solution to a known problem and the proposed solution introduces advantages (in some way) as compared to the currently existing solutions to the problem. Alternatively, it may be on studying security weaknesses of an existing (security) service and identifying new vulnerabilities and proposing solutions to address them.
You are welcome to propose your own project idea for a topic that you are interested in but you will need to provide convincing arguments on the relevance/importance/value/practicality of the proposed work and the expected outcomes. One best case scenario outcome from this work is to identify a good research area for your thesis/dissertation work and continue on it in the following semesters. Another desirable alternative outcome is to write a research paper out of the work and submit it to a workshop/conference and get it published. An alternative acceptable outcome is to show sufficient evidence that you have done substantial research work, learned a lot of new stuff on the relevant area and done some decent work in terms of proposing a potential solution to an existing problem and evaluated it using an acceptable evaluation mechanism (implementation/experimentation/simulation/mathematical analysis/etc) but the outcomes are not as good as planned.
For those students taking the research project option, if the work involves a heavy programming component, depending on the size of their project and with the (e-mail/written) approval of the instructor, they can use their implementation as a substitution for the Programming Project component of the overall class grade.
Students taking this option will pick a topic and do their background research on the topic (by reading several research papers on the area). They will then prepare a project proposal and present it in the class. The presentation will include the problem context and description, a survey of the current state of the art solutions to the problem, and their proposed solution approach to address the problem. A well prepared project proposal presentation will also count toward the Paper presentation component of the overall grade for the course.
Once you sign up for the optional research project and present your proposal, we will decide on the appropriateness of the project and endorse it. If later on you decide that you are not doing a good progress toward the project, you can switch back to exam option (take the final exam instead of the project). However this decision needs to be made no later than the first exam date (October 8th) by sending an e-mail to me. In such a situation, your presentation for the project proposal could still count toward the paper presentation component of the course. However, you will need to take the final exam and do the class project as with other students.
During the semester, each student taking the project option will meet with the instructor (bi-weekly meetings) to present a 1-page report of his/her progress during the past two weeks and discuss any relevant issues with the project.