Syllabus

University of Puerto Rico
Rio Piedras Campus
College of Natural Sciences
Department of Computer Science

Fall 2020

Professor

Field	Value
Name	Humberto Ortiz-Zuazaga
Office	NCL A-159
Laboratory	NCL A-158
Telephone	787-764-0000 x88363
email	humberto.ortiz@upr.edu
Web page	http://ccom.uprrp.edu/~humberto/
Office hours	Monday and Tuesday 1:00 - 3:00 PM
	or by appointment

Description

In this course, students will learn secure system and network administration techniques. Students will have hands-on system administration experiences with key Internet services, will learn about important security issues related to such services, and will be exposed to techniques and tools to analyze, defend and secure systems and networks.

Credits

3 credits, 3 hr./week

Pre-requisites

CCOM 4088 - Introduction to Cybersecurity
One of:
- CCOM 4086 - Computer Architecture
- CCOM 4017 - Operating Systems
- CCOM 4205 - Computer Networks
Students from SICI can substitute:
- SICI 4286 - Local Area Networks
- SICI 4025 - Design and Analysis of Systems

Content

The course will use material developed for MIT's Graduate Computer Systems Security class under a Creative Commons Attribution license. The original course material describes the content as:

Lectures cover threat models, attacks that compromise security, and techniques for achieving security, based on recent research papers. Topics include operating system (OS) security, capabilities, information flow control, language security, network protocols, hardware security, and security in web applications. Assignments include labs that involve implementing and compromising a secure web server and web application, and a group final project.

Objectives

After successfully completing the course students will be able to:

Course Objective	Program Outcome
Analyze a computer system, identifying one or more potential security vulnerabilities	Creative and analytic ability, and capacity for logical reasoning
Exploit common security vulnerabilities	Ability to identify, organize, evaluate, and use information
Understand mitigation techniques implemented in modern computer systems	Ability to identify and formulate problems in various real-life situations that can be solved by concepts and computational models and to implement them effectively
Implement changes to a computer system to mitigate security risks	Ability to identify and formulate problems in various real-life situations that can be solved by concepts and computational models and to implement them effectively
Assess the risks in a computer system	Creative and analytic ability, and capacity for logical reasoning

Course schedule

Class will meet Mondays and Wednesdays from 10:00 to 11:20 AM. In UPR-RP attendance is compulsory. This semester, due to COVID-19, we will be meeting online, not on campus. We will usually meet in Google Meet. The professor will provide the video link for each class to the student's official @upr.edu email address.

Alternative Teaching Methods

Certification No. 112 (2014-2015) of the Governing Board defines a classroom course as a course in which 75% or more of the hours of instruction require the physical presence of the students and the teacher in the classroom. This means that 25% of a classroom course could be offered without requiring the physical presence of the students and the teacher in the classroom. If necessary, this course will be able to complete up to 25% of the contact hours (11.25 hours) on a non-face-to-face basis by alternative methods such as: videoconferences, instructional modules, discussion forums and others. If so, the calendar/agenda will be modified to include the topics that will be covered by alternative methods.

Tentative course calendar

Date	Topic	Chapter	Lecture	Lab
Aug	Intro	0x100	Lec 1 text, video
	Assembly, GDB	0x250 - 0x253		Lab 1 (part 1, exercise 1)
	Stack overflows	0x300 - 0x321	Lec 4 text, video (skip baggy bounds)	Lab 1 (part 1, exercise 2)
Sep	Stack exploit	0x480 - 0x482		Lab 1 (part 2, exercise 3)
	Shellcode	0x500 - 0x530		Lab 1 (part 2, exercise 4)
	Stack hardening	0x6a0 - 0x6c1	Lec 3 text, video (skip baggy bounds)	Lab 1 (part 2, exercise 5)
	ROP Attacks		64-bit stack smashing tutorial: Part 2	Lab 1 (part 2, exercise 6)
Oct	Privilege separation	0x280 - 0x283, Krohn, Maxwell N. "Building Secure High-Performance Web Services with OKWS." USENIX Annual Technical Conference, General Track. 2004. pdf	Lec 4 text, video	Lab 2 (exercise 1, 2, 3)
	Web security	OWASP 2021	Lec 8 text, video	Lab 2 (exercise 9, 10, 11)
	Securing web services	Security in Django	Lec 9 text, video
Nov	Networking	0x430 - 0x475 and Bellovin paper	Lec 12 text, video
	RSA	Small RSA
	RSA	Big RSA
	HTTPS	0x741	Lec 15 text, video	Final Project
Dec	Tor	paper	Lec 19 video
	Tahoe filesystem	paper
	Scuttlebutt	paper

Instructional resources

The course will be hosted on the UPR RP Moodle. Register and stay tuned for our polls and forum postings.

The course will use material developed for MIT's Graduate Computer Systems Security class which has lecture notes, videos, lab assignments and quizzes online, as well as links to reference material.

Textbook

We will mostly use the MIT course materials

We will also use the book. Hacking: the Art of Exploitation, 2nd Edition. Jon Erickson. No Starch Press. 2008. ISBN-13: 978-1-59327-144-2

Software

MIT's Lab 1 provides a virtual machine image you will use for the lab assignments. I have tested the image on VirtualBox (OS X and linux) and kvm (on linux). Other students have had trouble with the gdb command on OS X. MIT recommends running in VMWare player or kvm.

Course policies

Be excellent to each other.

Evaluation

Students work will be evaluated on a 100% basis with the standard curve.

Participation in course forums (online, classroom), 25% final grade
Homework and quizzes, 50% final grade
Project, 25% final grade

Reasonable accommodations for students

The University of Puerto Rico (UPR) complies with all federal and state laws and regulations regarding discrimination, including the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico Law 51. Students who have a disability or condition that may impair their ability to complete assignments or otherwise satisfy course criteria are encouraged to meet with the professor to identify, discuss and document any feasible instructional modifications or accommodations. The student should notify the instructor such disability or condition as soon as such disability or condition is known to the student. The student may also contact the Dean of Student Affair for information and auxiliary aid.

Students with disabilities properly registered with the Office of Affairs for Persons with Disabilities Oficina de Asuntos para la Persona con Impedimento (O.A.P.I.) should notify the professor at the start of the semester. The professor will make reasonable accommodations to support the student, in consultation with OAPI.

Academic integrity

The University of Puerto Rico promotes the highest standards of academic and scientific integrity. Article 6.2 of the UPR Students General Bylaws (Board of Trustees Certification 13, 2009-2010) states that academic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to: fraudulent actions; obtaining grades or academic degrees by false or fraudulent simulations; copying the whole or part of the academic work of another person; plagiarizing totally or partially the work of another person; copying all or part of another person answers to the questions of an oral or written exam by taking or getting someone else to take the exam on his/her behalf; as well as enabling and facilitating another person to perform the aforementioned. Any of these behaviors will be subject to disciplinary action in accordance with the disciplinary procedure laid down in the UPR Students General Bylaws.

Discrimination

The University of Puerto Rico prohibits discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity in any of its forms, including that of sexual harassment. According to the Institutional Policy Against Sexual Harassment at the University of Puerto Rico, Certification Num. 130, 2014-2015 from the Board of Governors, any student subjected to acts constituting sexual harassment, must turn to the Office of the Student Ombudsperson, the Office of the Dean of Students, and/or the Coordinator of the Office of Compliance with Title IX for an orientation and/or a formal complaint.

References

Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective, 3rd Edition. Randal E. Bryant and David R. O'Hallaron, Pearson. 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0134092669
Secrets & Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World. Bruce Schneier, John Wiley & Sons . 2000. ISBN 978-0-471-45380-2
Computer Systems Security. MIT. 2019. Available at http://css.csail.mit.edu/6.858/2019/general.html
Mary Micco and Hart Rossman. 2002. Building a cyberwar lab: lessons learned: teaching cybersecurity principles to undergraduates. SIGCSE Bull. 34, 1 (February 2002), 23-27. DOI=https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/563517.563349
Cheung, Ronald S., et al. "Challenge based learning in cybersecurity education."; Proceedings of the 2011 International Conference on Security & Management. Vol. 1. 2011.
Nance, K., Hay, B., Dodge, R., Seazzu, A., & Burd, S. (2009). Virtual laboratory environments: Methodologies for educating cybersecurity researchers. Methodological Innovations Online, 4(3), 3-14. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.452.3587&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Alex Reese. Introduction to Return Oriented Programming, 2013. Available online at http://codearcana.com/posts/2013/05/28/introduction-to-return-oriented-programming-rop.html