Stanford

CS55N
Ten Ideas in Computer Security and Cryptography
(one idea per week)


Freshmen seminar. Fall 2003.


 

Administrative

List of students in class
Course Staff and office hours

Lectures:   Tu,Th, 11:00 - 12:15, Gates 498.

Optional textbooks (most of the readings will be from papers handed out in class):

Topics

The goal is to cover one topic (idea) per week. Please keep in mind that there are many more ideas in computer security that we will not get to in this seminar. Students are encouraged to take the more advanced security courses in their junior and senior years.

To keep things lively we will interleave topics in computer security and cryptography.
Here is a tentative list of the ten 'ideas' we will discuss:

  1. Symmetric encryption and message integrity.
  2. Buffer overflow attacks and defenses.
  3. Public key encryption.
  4. Confinment and Sandboxing.
  5. User Authentication.
  6. Firewalls.
  7. Zero Knowledge protocols.
  8. Viruses: building and defending.
  9. Network security protocols.
  10. Denial of Service attacks.