BSc Computer Science (Human Computer Interaction) / Course details

The course will provide an introduction to the security issues, properties, models and practices in a networked and distributed context. It will discuss systematic approach to the identification and classification of security vulnerabilities and threats in the context. It will describe some of the classical cryptographic techniques and examine their weaknesses and ways to address the weaknesses. It will introduce the principles and algorithms of the most widely used cryptographic schemes and discuss how to apply appropriate cryptographic schemes to design security methods and protocols to achieve a given security goal, or to solve a given security problem, in a practical (efficient, usable and scalable) manner. It will also describe the principles and practices of some system security solutions.

Students who are not from the School of Computer Science must have permission from both Computer Science and their home School to enrol.

This course unit introduces students to the principles and practice of cryptography, applied cryptography and system security, exploring popular cryptographic methods and security protocols and their applications for countering network and distributed system based security threats and attacks.

• Analyse, identify and classify security vulnerabilities and threats in a networked and distributed system context.
• Describe some of the classical cryptographic techniques and their weaknesses. 
• Describe the principles and algorithms of the most widely used cryptographic schemes.
• Apply appropriate cryptographic schemes to design security methods and protocols to achieve a given security goal, or to solve a given security problem, in a practical (efficient, usable and scalable) manner.
• Describe the principles and practices of some system security solutions.

Introduction to Security

basic notions of security, security properties (confidentiality, integrity and availability), security vulnerabilities, threats and attacks, the use of attack trees in evaluating and classifying security vulnerabilities and threats, security models, policies and mechanisms

Cryptographic methods (or primitives)

classical encryption techniques, Feistel encryption and decryption, symmetrical (or conventional) ciphers, block cipher and stream cipher principles and operations, introduction to number theory, asymmetrical (or public-key) ciphers

cryptographic hash functions, Message Authentication Code (MACs), digital signatures

Establishing trust, cryptographic (or security) protocols

Diffie-Hellman key exchange, symmetric key distributions, digital certificates and Public Key Infrastructures (PKIs), user identification and authentication, single sign on, cryptographic protocol analysis and design

Network and Internet Security

IP security, web security, email security, Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) security, e-commerce security, Cloud computing security

 

Via question/answer sessions.

COMP38411 reading list can be found on the Department of Computer Science website for current students.

Course unit materials

Links to course unit teaching materials can be found on the School of Computer Science website for current students.