Subject Information version_0.0_(draft) A signed version of this text document is available on the web as http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs3441/info.txt. A non-signed html formtted version is available as http:// www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs3441/info.html. These will be updated from time to time, check regularly for the latest version. The signed version is the official version. Contents 1._Subject_Overview 11._Assignments 2._Assumed_Knowledge 12._Plagiarism 3._Subject_Objectives 13._Anonymous_marking_policy 4._Keeping_Informed 14._Intellectual_Property 5._Staff 15._Final_Examination 6._Getting_Help 16._Special_Consideration 7._Assessment 17._Check_Your_Marks 8._Lectures 18._Polices_and_Rules 9._Seminars 19._Texts 10._Tutorials_and_Presentations 20._Revision_History 1. Subject Overview This subject provides a broad introduction to computer security. We concentrate on two types of scenarios: 1. Protecting a trusted internal zone from an untrusted external world 2. Two parties communicating over on untrusted medium To this end we cover intrusion prevention, detection and response (i.e. dealing with hackers and crackers), together with cryptography and cryptographic protocols. A detailed list of topics is available in the subject schedule. This is likely to change somewhat from year to year to keep the coverage interesting and up-to-date. As you will see security is a constantly changing field. Each week we'll cover a security topic and a cryptographic topic. You will learn both the theoretical foundations and direct practical application for each topic. My aim is to have a strong hands-on focus wherever possible to teach you practical skills you can start to apply immediately. The field is too big to cover everything in one subject but by the end you will have an overview of the major topics in security, a good understanding of the current state of play, and have started to think like a security expert. My intention is make this a highly enjoyable subject. The field is a great deal of fun with puzzles, cunning, cloak-and-dagger antics and a never ending supply of great stories. However it will not be an easy subject - I'll expect you to master the underlying theory *and* to be able to apply it to real world situations. That's a lot to learn. Furthermore you may find that my teaching style does not suit you. You should consider these factors carefully before deciding to take this subject (I've provided more information to help you assess these factors - follow this link). For those who decide to proceed: hold onto your hats. You are in for a great ride! [back_to_top] 2. Assumed Knowledge I'll assume you know Java and the material from Data_Organisation. You need to be able to program and to be familiar with programming concepts. You need to know about operating systems and networks. I haven't made the subjects Operating Systems and Networks compulsory prerequisites however as you only need to know a fraction of the material covered in these subjects, and the networking material we do use involves much more detail than is covered in the general networking subject. Doing Networking and Operating Systems in advance will help you in this subject so do them if you can. However I'll assume you haven't done them and will cover the material you need either in class, in optional lectures, or in additional reading for you to do in your own time if you think you need to do so. We'll be working with a number of cryptographic techniques. So you'll need to know some simple abstract algebra or be willing to learn. Finite maths and discrete maths is sufficient background. Less background would be ok if you are keen and prepared to learn a few simple topics on your own. For networking you'll need to know the basics of TCP/IP, or be willing to learn. I'll run some extra TCP/IP lectures in the first few weeks for those who haven't done networking or who are feeling a bit rusty. You don't really need to have done Algorithms to have done this subject. We don't rely on anything you would learn in it, and indeed there may even be some repeated coverage since we will do the RSA algorithm again (if applies to you - sorry!) If you have done Algorithms however you will have a nice understanding of the limitations of brute force attacks. [back_to_top] 3. Subject Objectives After completing this subject, you should be able to: * design and audit security policies, * understand and use mathematical cryptographic techniques, * be familiar with the major cryptographic protocols and know their strengths, weaknesses, and when it is appropriate to use them, * be familiar with the major cryptosystems and cryptographic applications and know their strengths, weaknesses, and when it is appropriate to use them, * have an understanding of the types of hackers/crackers, and of their motivations and behaviour, * design and configure firewall systems, * have an appreciation of the major elements of intrusion prevention and be able to assess the strengths and weaknessess of particular sites, * have an understanding of intrusion detection measures and be able to implement a simple intrusion detection system using an application such as snort, * understand various possible attacks using tcp/ip and countermeasures for each, * understand the vulnerabilities of each level of the tcp/ip stack and security approaches to address these, * understand the vulnerabilities of the major operating systems found on hosts: including windows, linux, and cisco os, * be able to harden a host. [back_to_top] 4. Keeping Informed Important notices related to this course will be displayed on the subject home page from time to time. It is your responsibility to check this page regularly. The URL is: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs3441/ Sometimes urgent information may also be sent to you by email. Make sure you pay careful attention to any email you receive. All official email will be sent to your cse email address. If you prefer to read your mail at some other address redirect your mail using mlalias. Ask your tutor if you need help doing this. Additional information will be provided in the subject Forum/FAQ and elsewhere on the 3441 site as the session progresses. You should explore the subject web site, read the stopPress and the forums, and check this page regularly for updates. [back_to_top] 5. Staff _______________________________________ |Richard_Buckland_|Lecturer-In-Charge___| |Mei_Cheng_Whale__|Subject_Administrator| |Roland_Wen_______|Head_Tutor___________| |???______________|Tutor________________| |Ron_Van_Der_Mayen|Guest_Lecturer_______| There may also be some visiting guest speakers. [back_to_top] 6. Getting Help If you need help email or speak to your tutor in the first instance. If your tutor can't help you with an admin matter contact Mei Cheng (email cs3441@cse.unsw.edu.au, or meet her face to face at an admin consult). Admin matters include requests for extensions and special considerations. If you need help with the subject material attend a teaching consult or ask Richard at the lecture. Richard will stay back as late as needed after lectures to answer questions. To contact Richard use the subject forum. Please do not email Richard at his personal email address, he does not read email reliably. Richard, the tutors, and your fellow students all monitor the forum regularly and questions there usually get a prompt response. For urgent issues email Mei Cheng and she will deal with it or pass it on to Richard as appropriate. [back_to_top] 7. Assessment The assessable components of the subject for COMP3441 students are: * 10 marks - Tutorial Attendance (5) and Presentation (5) * 15 marks - Assignment 1 * 15 marks - Assignment 2 * 10 marks - Seminar * 50 marks - Final exam COMP9441 students do not attend tutorials and do not have a tutorial mark. The remainder of your assessment is as for COMP3441. The total is then pro-rated to be a mark out of 100. Note that COMP9441 students may elect to attend tutorials if they wish, contact Mei Cheng to arrange this. In such cases they will be awarded the greater of the mark calculated on the COMP3441 basis and the mark calculated on the COMP9441 basis. Where your assignment marks are significantly higher than your exam mark, your assignment marks will be reduced and you may be required to attend an interview to explain the difference. Marks will be scaled to ensure that the Pass/Fail boundary and the Distinction/High Distinction boundary reflect a consistent standard from session to session. [back_to_top] 8. Lectures Lectures are Tuesday 5-8pm in Rex Vowels Theatre (EELG1). These are followed immediately by a seminar from 8-9pm. That's a long time. We'll have a number of short breaks and one long one for dinner. Bring food and drink (to be consumed *outside* the lecture theatre of course). In this subject the purpose of lectures is to introduce you to the concepts covered, show where they fit in the overall scheme of things and provide motivating examples to help you understand them. You will need to do additional work outside of lecture time to master the subject. Lecture notes on the web will only be in point form and will not contain any detail. They provide a framework for your note taking. As they only provide a sketchy outline of the material we cover, they are not a replacement for attending lectures or for making your own notes. You need to attend lectures and make your own detailed lecture notes to do this subject effectively. I want those last points to be very clear. You will need to attend lectures, take notes, and do additional study in order to master this subject. You will NOT be able to skip lectures and print out the lecture slides during stuvac and be able to pass the subject. Sometimes I'll ammend the notes on the web *after* the lecture to clarify or elaborate on something that I feel wasn't expained well in the lecture. I'll let you know when this has happened. [back_to_top] 9. Seminars One of the special features of this subject is the weekly student seminar. In the past these have proved one of the most successful and most popular aspects of the subject. The weekly seminar is given by a different group of students following the lecture each week starting from week 4. Seminars are given in the Rex Vowels Theatre (EELG1). Each student will be allocated to a seminar group of 8-10 students in week 2 and that group will give one seminar during the course of the subject. Seminar topics will be posted in advance on the subject schedule. Groups are expected to carefully research their topic and give a clear and detailed explanation of it to the remainder of the class. The seminar is to last 30-40 minutes followed by 10 minutes of questions and answers and general class discussion. Each group is to produce a detailed written report submitted in printed form at the start of the seminar, and also submitted electronically via give. The report is to provide a detailed explaination of the seminar topic and an analysis and synthisis of the the material covered in the presentation. It is to include two sample exam questions, one with a sample solution, and several tutorial style self-study questions covering the main areas addressed in the presentation, with sample solutions. The reports and sample questions and (eventually) the sample answers will be made available to students to help them revise the seminar topic. The report should be professional. It should include diagrams, listings, links to supplementary material, and a comprehensive bibliography. It should provide a clear and detailed explanation of the topic. It is to be submitted as zip file which, when unzipped, produces a file index.html in the current directory, and additional files in the current directory or subdrectories of it as required. The entry point to the report is to be index.html and it is to be viewed by web browsers including, but not limited to, Mozilla. Do not make your report specific to one particular browser. Each group will need to elect a group contact person or group leader and advise mei cheng who is it by the start of week 3. This person is to be the one who submits the report using give. You may wish to assign some students to producing the report and some to giving the presentation. However you should make sure that the planning is done at a group level by all students in the group. You will need to arrange to meet regularly to plan and work on your seminar. Make sure you reherse the seminar presentation carefully well in advance. The seminar will be assessed on a pass/fail basis. A pass will be awarded where the seminar AND the report both provide a clear and detailed explanation of the topic. Unlike the tutorial presentation this is expected to be a professional and effective presentation into which a substantial amount of effort, preparation and planning has been invested. I will also invite the rest of the class to give their own assessment of your seminar and will take this into account when determining your grade. I expect all students to pass (10 marks) the seminar. Do not do a poor seminar, it will let down your fellow students who are relying on you to introduce them to the seminar topic. In cases where the report or the presentation is unsatisfactory the entire group will be awarded a fail (0 marks). Note that this is a group project and the group needs to work together to make it a success. In exceptional borderline cases where, say, the presentation is very good but the report is weak, or visa versa, the group may be given supplementary work as a second chance to pass. There will be no third chances. To the extent that the original work of individual students can be unambigiously identified the required supplimentary work may be different for different members of the group. The seminar each week is to be recorded by the group who is presenting in the next week (I'll provide you with a digital video camera). The last group will be recorded by the first group. If all goes well I'll put these recordings on a DVD for your study. This may or may not work (or be any good) - so don't skip the seminars and assume you'll be able to catch up later using the DVD - if we manage to produce it it will just be for revision. [back_to_top] 10. Tutorials & Presentations All 3441 students attend a weekly tutorial. 9441 students do not expected to attend tutorials - however they may contact Mei Cheng and arrange to do so if they wish. Tutorials start Thursday Week 1. Book your tutorial time online using NSS. Check times shortly before the subject starts even if you selected a time at the start of the year since available times may have subsequently changed. There are 5 marks for tutorial attendance and 5 marks for a presentation. You must attend 10 tutorials to get 5/5 for attendance. Tutorial presentations are explained on the tutorial_presentation information_page. Your tutor will allocate you a presentation partner and presentation day in the first tutorial. [back_to_top] 11. Assignments The assignments are an extremely important part of the course. They are an essential way of learning the practical skills you need to acquire. Any plagiarism in assignments will result in an automatic Fail for the whole subject. Read the plagiarism warning below for more detail. The assignment specifications will be posted on the subject web page closer to their release date. Unless advised otherwise assignments will be released midnight Monday in the release week and due 10am Monday in the due week. In cases where a "beta" specification is provided before the official release you are welcome to start the assignment early - but be aware that the offical release specification may differ from the beta specification and marking will be on the basis of the official specification. A rapid completion bonus of 2 marks will be awarded to assignment submissions made before the official assignment release and within 36 hours of the beta specification being provided. By now you should know that computing assignments can take much longer to complete than you at first estimate, so make sure you start them promptly and allow plenty of time. Unless otherwise stated assignments must be submitted using the give command. It is in your best interests to make regular backup copies of your work and (because of machine loads on deadline days, for example) to complete assignments well before their deadlines. If you wish to submit an assignment late, you may do so but the maximum available mark for late assignments is reduced by 10% if it is one day late, by 25% if it is 2 days late and by 50% if it is 3 days late. Assignments that are late 4 days or more will be awarded zero marks. So if your assignment is worth 85% and you submit it one day late you still get 85%, but if you submit it two days late you get 75%, and so on. Assignment extensions are only awarded for serious and unforeseeable events. Having the flu for a few days, deleting your assignment by mistake, going on holiday, work commitments, etc do not qualify. Therefore aim to complete your assignments before the due date in case of last minute illness, and make regular backups of your work. [back_to_top] 12. Plagiarism All work submitted for assessment must be entirely your own work. We regard copying of assignments, in whole or part, as an extremely serious offence. In this subject unacknowledged submission of any work derived from another person, or jointly written with someone else will, at the very least, result in automatic failure for the subject and a mark of zero for the subject. Do not provide or show your assignment work to any other person. Allowing another student to copy from you will, at the very least, result in zero for your assignment. If you knowingly provide or show your assignment work to another person for any reason, and work derived from it is submitted you will be penalized, even if the work was submitted without your knowledge or consent. This will apply even if your work is submitted by a third party unknown to you. Copying without consent, severe, or second offences will result in automatic failure, exclusion from the university, and possibly other academic discipline. These are no idle threats, we search the internet and use plagiarism detection software to hunt for non-original work. See also the 2004 Unix_Primer and the Yellow_Form and the faculty and university plagiarism policies for additional information. If the penalties set out on this page, the Unix Primer, the Yellow Form, the school, faculty, or university plagiarism policies differ for any situation, the more severe penalty applies. Note that we have experienced cases of plagiarism where the code has been copied from printouts or floppy disks/CDs/USB sticks that have been lost in the lab or stolen from the computer or printer. Generally, it is your responsibility to prevent other students from accessing your files, but if you loose a printout or floppy disk/CD/ USB stick, inform Mei Cheng immediately. [back_to_top] 13. Anonymous marking policy In this subject assignment assessment is intended to be formative (to help students learn material) rather than summative (give an objective benchmark measuring what has been learned) When marking assignments we want tutors to build up an intimate model of what each student is up to, their strengths and weaknesses. For this reason assignments are not marked anonymously. If you have concerns about non-anonymous assignment marking come to an admin consultation and discuss them with us in advance. [back_to_top] 14. Intellectual Property Copyright of any material you submit will belong to us. Submitting means you accept this condition. We give you a non exclusive licence granting you in every way possible the rights you had before submitting the material. One of the reasons we require this is so we can use your work as an example to students in future sessions. With programming assignments we typically do this to demonstrate poor style and common mistakes. We usually try to keep student material anonymous unless we are praising it. However if you would like to be identified as the author of a file even if we are not praising it, then include the following line in a comment at the very top of the file: Please identify me as the author whenever referring to this. In particular in this subject we will make a video of your seminar. We'll distribute and share all the seminar and presentation resource material you submit. All copyright and intellectual property arising from this belongs to us. Submitting material includes posting material on the subject forum and sending email to the teaching staff or class account. [back_to_top] 15. Final Examination The final examination in this subject will be held during the November examination period; it will examine all material covered in lectures, seminars, assignments, tutorial exercises, and any reading you have been given. Supplementary examinations will be held soon after the results have been released. If you think that you may be eligible for a Supplementary Examination, make sure you are available around that time. Be careful not to plan any overseas travel at that time. If you can't attend the sup exam you will not be offered a second chance. It is your responsibility to check your email, the CSE website, and contact the CSE school office for details of Supplementary Examinations. If you think there is any chance you might be eligible for a Supplementary Exam then you should prepare for it. Requests such as "I didn't find out until the day before the sup exam that I could sit the sup exam, so I need more time to study" will not be granted. [back_to_top] 16. Special Consideration Students whose exam performance is affected by serious and un- foreseeable events outside their control can apply at the student centre for special consideration. Special considerations will only be given when each and every other component of the course (eg assignments, tutes, presentation, seminar) has been passed and satisfactorily completed. [back_to_top] 17. Check Your Marks You can inspect the current state of your mark record by using the command classrun -sturec Check your record frequently and make sure you contact us promptly if you do not agree with it. All marks must be finalised by the end of week 15. If you think there is a problem with any of your marks (tutorial attendance, seminar, presentation, assignments) then you need to advise us by emailing cs3441@cse.unsw.edu.au within two weeks of the mark being released, and, in all cases before the end of week 15. No marks will be changed after the end of week 15. [back_to_top] 18. Polices and Rules The university has a number of rules and policies which affect you (see the university calandar and the university home page), additionally the school of CSE has a number of rules and policies (see the "Yellow_form"), and this subject has a number of rules and policies (see this page). Where there is a conflict between these sets of rules and policies the most strict shall apply. Where there is ambiguity in the interpretation of any rule of policy the most strict interpretation shall apply. If you are in any doubt as to the meaning, interpretation, or effect of any rule or policy please ask the subject administrator or the lecturer in charge. [back_to_top] 19. Texts See the list and comments on the subject_readings_page We'll discuss textbooks and reccommended reading in the first lecture and I'll bring copies of some books from the list in for you to browse. All the books on the list would be a sensible addition to your professional library. They are the primary sources I have used in setting this subject. The university bookshop will sell you any of the books listed on the subject readings page at the GST discounted price. A printout of that page should be sufficient evidence that the books are recommended for this subject and hence eligible for the GST discount. Anton at the bookshop has previously confirmed this. Let me know if you have problems getting the discount. No single book covers the entire subject well. You will need to refer to some of the other books in this list to fill any gaps in the textbook(s) you have purchased. Most are available in the UNSW Library, so I suggest you hold back a while to find out which topics you enjoy and which you need help with. [back_to_top] 20. Revision History ____________________________________________________________________ |Version|Released|Comments |Text_only_version______| |_______|________|___________________________|file______|MD5_checksum| |0.0 |24/02/04|Beta release. I'll release |[info.txt]| | | | |snapshots of this document | | | | | |over the period before the | | | | | |subject starts so you can | | | | | |check out how it is | | | | | |evolving. However do note | | | | | |it is just an indication of| | | | | |the structure of the | | | | | |subject - everything is | | | | | |subject to change while it | | | |_______|________|is_still_in_draft_format.__|__________|____________| text version produced by one of the following: links -dump info.html > info.txt html2text -nobs -width 70 -style pretty info.html > info.txt [back_to_top]