News

• (May 19) NEW  Final grades posted on grades.cs.umd.edu.
• (May 14) Spring 2009 Exam 2. No solution (as mentioned in class). Ignore the IPsec problem.
• (Apr 27) Standards slides (Kerberos, SSL, IPsec).
• (Apr 21) Homework 4 (due april 29 may 4 in class).
• (Apr 14) Project page has changes to TA office hours and will soon have new project deadlines.
• (Apr 12)
  • Exam 1 solution and grading
  • Exam grades available.
  • Cutoffs and grade distribution:
    A ≥ 45 (10 students)
    B ≥ 36 (14 students)
    C ≥ 30 (10 students)
    D ≥ 25 (5 students)
    F < 25 (2 students)
• (Apr 11) Please contact the TA for ALL project questions.
• (Apr 2) Project 2 posted (details on project page). Deadline for Task 1 is Apr 14.
• (Apr 1) Exam 1 review?. Ask questions in class and I'll happily spend time on them.
• (Mar 30b) Practice exams. As suggested, do an exam under exam conditions; then see how you score; then review the material you did not understand; then repeat with the next exam. Work your way from earliest to latest.
  • Spring 2009 Exam 1 and its solution and grading.
  • Fall 2008 Exam 1 and its solution and grading.
  • Fall 2007 Exam 1 and its solution and grading.
  • Fall 2006 Exam 1 and its solution and grading. Ignore problem 3 (based on a discontinued project).
  • Spring 2006 Exam 1 and its solution and grading. Ignore problem 5 (based on CRT).
• (Mar 30a) Exam 1 on April 8.
• (Mar 11) Homework 3 (due April 1 Thursday in class): Chapter 9, problems 2 and 3 (2nd edition of text).
• (Mar 11) Exam 1 on April 6 or 8. (deadline for dropping course: April 16).
• (Mar 2b)
  • Project1 posted (due date: Mar 22).
  • Hw 1 grades posted.
  • Homework 2 (due Mar 11 in class).
• (Mar 2a)
  • Grades posted on grades.cs.umd.edu.
  • Projects posted on GRACE. Check project page (link above) regularly.
• (Feb 18b) TA office hours for next week changed to Thursday (Feb 25) 3:30-5:30pm.
• (Feb 18a) Talk: The Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI); an up-and-coming standard for using certificates to verify IP addresses.
  By Dr. Stephen Kent (BBN Technologies, Cyber Security division in Columbia, MD)
  Info/rsvp: http://www.evite.com/app/publicUrl/MGEXQXVKDTHGOGNGPSGM/bbn
  PEPCO Room, KIM Engineering Building, UMD. Thursday, 2/18, 6:30pm
  BBN also looking to hire.
• (Feb 14b) Homework 1 (due feb 23 in class).
• (Feb 14a) Mini-job fair for CS students: Several companies (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Booz Allen Hamilton, DOJ, Macedon Consulting and Accenture) will be coming to do presentations and meet students on Thursday 2/18/10 in CSIC from 5:30pm-8:00pm.

Overview

This course is an introduction to the broad field of computer network security, examining algorithms and protocols for confidentiality, authentication, non-repudiation, anonymity, etc., and applications involving them (secure email, secure web transactions, etc.).

Required text:

Network Security: Private Communication in a Public World, 2nd edition by Kaufman, Perlman, and Speciner. ISBN 0-13-046019-2.

In case you're wondering, the first edition of this book is fine for most of the course. There are only a few chapters (IPsec, SSL) that we cover which are not present in the first edition. So if you can access this material, the first edition should suffice.

Course topics, roughly in the order to be covered.

Class notes:

• crypto (DES, MD4, RSA)
• authentication (KDC, CA)
• standards (Kerberos, SSL, IPsec)

Programming projects

Will be done on the OIT GRACE cluster.

Practice exams

The only "practice" exams I will post will be the midterm exams from previous semesters, which are also publicly available on the previous class web pages. I suggest you don't look at this exam prematurely. In my opinion, the best use of these practice exams is to first prepare for this semester's midterm and then do the following with each exam (from earliest to latest): do a practice exam under exam conditions (including time duration); see how you score (the scoring guidelines are also included in the exam solution); review the material you did not understand; repeat with the next exam.

Homeworks

Many of the homework problems are repeated from previous semesters, and their solutions are publicly available on the previous class web pages. Such homework problems will have a very small weight in the final grade, but understanding the solution can help you in the exams.

Late homeworks will not be accepted; turn in whatever you have completed by the deadline.

Regrade requests

Any regrade request (for exams, homeworks, projects) must be submitted within a week of the grade being posted.

Grading

• Midterm ------ approx 30%     (Date: April 8)
• Final ---------- approx 30%     (Date: Mon, May 17 10:30 am - 12:30 pm)
• Projects/Homework ---- approx  30%    

Academic Integrity

Homeworks and projects are to be done individually. You may consult outside references when doing the homework, as long as these sources are properly referenced, you write up the solution yourself, and you understand the answer. For example, if you look at other source code, you may not copy the code directly in your program, but you may model your program after it. And you must reference it!

Academic dishonesty.

This page and all problem sets, lecture notes, and exams linked to it are copyrighted. Use of these pages for the class CMSC414 at the University of Maryland is permitted. Any other use requires permission of the author (Udaya Shankar, shankar@cs.umd.edu).