MSc: Security of systems and networks

Security of systems and networks

• Course name: Security of systems and networks (SSN)
• Course number: SNE-08

Course characteristics

Key concepts of the class

• Network security
• Applied cryptography
• Security protocols
• Internet security

What is the purpose of this course?

This course will cover the fundamentals of security, security protocols, and their applications in real-world. The topics covered in this course include applied cryptography, authentication, passwords, practical security, social aspects of security, SSL/TLS, email security, PKI, and IPSec. Furthermore, this course will strengthen the security knowledge of the students and guide them in the right direction for their upcoming research projects and advanced courses. The course is divided into two parts. The first part will cover the theory and handson practice of the concepts taught at class. And the second part of the course will focus on the course projects. The student will work on a security project by using the concepts taught in the class.

Prerequisites

• No specific prerequisites are mandated.

Recommendations for students on how to succeed in the course

References:

• Read the book
• Follows the lectures

Course Objectives Based on Bloom’s Taxonomy

What should a student remember at the end of the course?

By the end of the course, the students should be able to:

• Identify different Internet applications and understand their working principles from the protocols point of view
• Demonstrate the acquired knowledge and skills in classical internet applications including DNS, Email, and Directory services.
• Able to write regular expressions and context-free grammar that are essential in Internet applications and information exchange through the networks
• Able to partition disks and remember the booting principles as well as secure booting

What should a student be able to understand at the end of the course?

By the end of the course, the students should be able to:

• Demonstrate the acquired knowledge and skills in applied cryptography (symmetric and asymmetric cryptography),
• Operate classical enigma machine, encode and decode messages with it
• Demonstrate the working knowledge of famous cryptographic algorithms and discuss their shortcomings
• Demonstrate and operate the already implemented security protocols over internet,
• Reason about the problems in the security of networked systems and current internet and their existing solutions,
• Solve mathematical problems (especially in number theory),
• And Demonstrate the knowledge and discuss basic quantum cryptography concepts.

What should a student be able to apply at the end of the course?

By the end of the course, the students should be able to apply:

• Crypt-analyze ciphertext and decrypt through frequency analysis and other important techniques
• Design security protocols
• Find security flaws in security protocols
• Get hands-on experience of the existing enterprise cryptographic algorithms and use them in projects,
• Demonstrate the skill of finding out security issues in networked systems and internet technologies,

Course evaluation

The acquired knowledge will be evaluated via labs, a project, and the exam, with points as in the following table:

Type of Evaluation	Points
Labs/seminar classes	35
Project	35
Exam	30

Grades range

The grades will be given according to the following table:

Grade	Range of points
A. Excellent	90-100
B. Good	75-89
C. Satisfactory	60-74
D. Poor	0-59

Resources and reference material

• Lecture slides
• Book
• Links to the online material will be provided (if any)

Course Sections

The main sections of the course and approximate hour distribution between them is as follows:

Course Sections

Section	Section Title	Teaching Hours
1	Intro, Booting, Operating Systems Essentials, and Computer Architecture	8
2	DNS, DNSSEC, DoH	14
3	Email	4
4	ABNF, Deflating, Directory Services, Disks, Web, and Protocols	12
5	Labs	56

Section title:

Booting, Operating Systems, and Computer Architecture

Topics covered in this section:

• Booting principles and disks
• Essentials of operating systems
• Fundamentals of computer architecture

What forms of evaluation were used to test students’ performance in this section?

|a|c| & Yes/No
Development of individual parts of software product code & 0
Homework and group projects & 1
Midterm evaluation & 0
Testing (written or computer based) & 1
Reports & 1
Essays & 0
Oral polls & 0
Discussions & 1

Typical questions for ongoing performance evaluation within this section

1. What are the different steps in booting?
2. How the disks are partitioned?
3. Explain UEFI booting

Typical questions for seminar classes (labs) within this section

1. Demonstrating the knowledge of booting
2. Analyze assembly code at a basic level
3. Demonstrate the system and library calls in operating systems

Test questions for final assessment in this section

1. Same as above

Section title:

DNS, DNSSEC, and DoH

Topics covered in this section:

• DNS
• DNSSEC
• DoH

What forms of evaluation were used to test students’ performance in this section?

|a|c| & Yes/No
Development of individual parts of software product code & 0
Homework and group projects & 1
Midterm evaluation & 0
Testing (written or computer based) & 1
Reports & 1
Essays & 0
Oral polls & 0
Discussions & 1

Typical questions for ongoing performance evaluation within this section

1. Hows does DNS query get resolved?
2. What is iterative and recursive DNS server?
3. How does wildcard work in DNS?
4. What is zone walking in secure DNS?
5. What is delegation in DNS?
6. What is NSEC and NSEC3 records in DNSSEC?
7. What is the difference between DNSSEC and DoH?

Typical questions for seminar classes (labs) within this section

1. Configure DNS, DNSSEC, and DoH (with specific tasks)

Test questions for final assessment in this section

1. How does DNS query get resolved in DNS?
2. How zones are formed?
3. How delegation works in DNS?
4. How resource records are verified in DNSSEC?
5. What is meant by zone walking and how is it avoided?
6. Why do we need DNSSEC where we can use simple DNS over HTTPS?

Section title:

Email

Topics covered in this section:

• Email architecture
• Spam management

What forms of evaluation were used to test students’ performance in this section?

|a|c| & Yes/No
Development of individual parts of software product code & 0
Homework and group projects & 1
Midterm evaluation & 0
Testing (written or computer based) & 1
Reports & 1
Essays & 0
Oral polls & 0
Discussions & 1

Typical questions for ongoing performance evaluation within this section

1. What are different protocols used in email?
2. What are the different agents used in email system?
3. How to avoid spamming in email?
4. How to configure email servers?

Typical questions for seminar classes (labs) within this section

1. Configure email server
2. Configure anti-spamming techniques

Test questions for final assessment in this section

1. What are different agents and their roles in email architecture?
2. How MX records work?
3. How to configure different anti-spamming policies?

Section title:

Directory, Web, Protocol, ABNF and Deflating

Topics covered in this section:

• Directory services
• Web
• Protocols
• ABNF
• Deflating

What forms of evaluation were used to test students’ performance in this section?

|a|c| & Yes/No
Development of individual parts of software product code & 0
Homework and group projects & 1
Midterm evaluation & 0
Testing (written or computer based) & 1
Reports & 1
Essays & 0
Oral polls & 0
Discussions & 1

Typical questions for ongoing performance evaluation within this section

1. How directory services are implemented?
2. How permissions are set?
3. How disk partitions are made?
4. How different web protocols work?
5. How network packets are management in a standard way through ABNF?
6. How to write new formats through ABNF?

Typical questions for seminar classes (labs) within this section

1. Implement different web services
2. Configure active directory

Test questions for final assessment in this section

1. As above