4003-471 Privacy and Security - Course Syllabus

1. Course Overview

1.1. Course Goal

The goal of this course is to help students become more aware of the issues surrounding the collection, storage, and use of information of all types. Both legal and ethical issues will be addressed. The need to protect information and to provide secure computing facilities will be used to motivate discussion of and experimentation with software tools for the defense of computer systems and networks.

1.2. Course Outcomes

The following are the intended outcomes for this course:

• Students will be able to exlain the seminal work in privacy and security literature.
• Students will demonstrate an understanding of fundamental issues in information control, and will be able to assess the risks associated with dissemination and misuse of information.
• Students will be able to use software tools for evaluating system and network vulnerabilities, detecting and recovering from computer system intrusions, and defending against intrusions.

1.3. Course Prerequisites

The prerequisites for this course are:

• Operating Systems I (4003-440, or equivalent)
• Data Communications and Networking I (4003-420, or equivalent)

In addition, students should show:

• computing maturity - experience writing a significant amount of code, some understanding of networks (e.g., protocols, etc.), etc.
• a strong interest in the course material
• a willingness to actively participate in the class

2. Books

The required textbooks for this course are:

• Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World, by Bruce Schneier, John Wiley & Sons, 2000.
• Privacy: What Developers and IT Professionals Should Know, by J. C. Cannon, Addison-Wesley, 2005

Other textbooks in the areas covered by this course include:

• Security:
  • Charles Pfleeger and Shari Lawrence Pfleeger, Security in Computing, Fourth edition, Prentice-Hall 2007
  • Matt Bishop, Computer Security: Art and Science, Addison-Wesley, 2003
  • Matt Bishop, Introduction to Computer Security, Addison-Wesley, 2005
  • Dorothy Denning, Information Warfare and Security,, Addison-Wesley (ACM Press) 1999
  • Dorothy and Peter Denning, Internet Besieged,, Addison-Wesley (ACM Press) 1998
  • Peter Denning, ed., Computer Under Attack: Intruders, Worms, and Viruses, Addison-Wesley (ACM Press) 1991
  • Winn Schwartau, Information Warfare,, Second Edition, Thunder's Mouth Press 1996
• Privacy, Ethics:
  • Simson Garfinkle, Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century, O'Reilly, 2000
  • Deborah Johnson and Helen Nissenbaum, Computers, Ethics, and Social Values, Prentice-Hall 1995
  • Sara Baase, A Gift of Fire: Social, Legal, and Ethical Issues in Computing, Prentice-Hall 1997
  • Charles Dunlop and Rob Kling, Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices, Academic Press 1991

Any programming work you do for this course will typically be done in C.

3. Grades

The final grade will be determined using the following weights:

3.1. Homework/Programming Assignments

Homework will be announced in class and posted to the course home page. Homework assignments will be a mix of theoretical and practical questions.

Some programming will be required; the exact number of these assignments and their scope will be determined during the quarter.

3.2. Participation

Students are expected to actively contribute to classroom discussions. This includes attending class, asking and answering questions, and contributing personal opinions and experiences to our discussions.

In order to ensure the free exchange of ideas and commentary, it is vital that, at all times, students respect the integrity and views of others participating in classroom activities.

3.3. Readings

In order to get used to reading literature pertaining to the course topics, students will also be required to submit short summaries of selected papers. Students may choose the papers they wish to summarize from the Reading List; however only one paper per topic should be chosen. Summaries must be submitted prior to the lecture corresponding to the topic covered by the paper.

3.4. Research Reports

Each student must prepare a short research report on a topic related to the course content. This report will take the form of a term paper of approximately 8-12 pages.

4. Academic Conduct

Academic dishonesty will be dealt with in accordance with DCS and RIT policies.

• RIT's Honor Code (section 1 of the RIT Students Rights and Responsibilities handbook).
  A general statement that sets standards of behavior for all members of the RIT community.

• RIT's Academic Honesty Policy (section 18 of the RIT Students Rights and Responsibilities handbook).
  Defines the basic forms of academic dishonesty (cheating, duplicate submission, and plagiarism) and explains the official RIT policy regarding academic dishonesty.

• The DCS Policy on Academic Integrity.
  Explains the official Department of Computer Science policy regarding incidents of academic dishonesty.

5. Notes

• Coursework: Unless otherwise specified in the assignment, all work you submit for grading must be your own. Code or ideas (specific algorithms, optimizations, etc.) obtained from or inspired by other sources must be properly attributed.

• Withdrawing: During the add/drop period (the first six days of the quarter), you may drop this course and it will disappear from your transcript. After that time, you can only withdraw from the course; the course will appear on your transcript with a grade of W. This quarter's deadline for withdrawing from courses is Friday, January 26, 2007 .

• Project submission: Unless otherwise indicated in the assignment, programming project solutions are to be submitted electronically by 23:59:59 (11:59:59pm) on the specified due date. Any day of the week is a valid due date. Solutions submitted through any other method (e.g., sent via email, slipped under my office door, put in the bin on the wall outside my office, etc.) will be ignored.

• Final Exam: RIT has an official set of Final Examination Policies which detail procedures related to the scheduling of final exams. Most important among these is the procedure to be followed by students who wish to request a change in date or time for an exam. Briefly, such a request is only accepted if the student has an exam conflict (i.e., two or more exams scheduled at the same time) or the student has three or more exams scheduled on the same day. Requests for rescheduling an exam must be submitted by the last day of week six.

  Although we will not have a final exam per se, we will use the two-hour final exam time for a course summary and wrap-up session. It may occur at any time during final exam week, and I have no control over its scheduling; remember this when you make plans for finals week!

• Assignment of final grades:

  I use a traditional 90/80/70/60 percentage-based grading scale in this class. I reserve the right to alter these division points as I see fit at the end of the quarter if I believe it to be necessary, based on my overall evaluation of individual or class performance and effort.

  Score Range Grade n ≥ 90% A 80% ≤ n < 90% B 70% ≤ n < 80% C 60% ≤ n < 70% D n < 60% F