CMSC 33250: Graduate Computer Security

The schedule and required readings for each class is below. Reading assignments for each class are due by 11:00am CT that day.
This schedule is subject to change. Please check back frequently.

Week	Date	Topics	Reading Assignment
Week 1	9/27	Course Introduction [Slides]	(No homework / written responses for this class.) S. Keshav. How to Read a Paper W. Griswold. How to Read an Engineering Research Paper
Week 2	10/02	Cybercrime & Ecosystems [Slides]	K. Thomas et al. Framing Dependencies Introduced by Underground Commoditization. WEIS 2015. K Levchenko et al. Click Trajectories: End-to-End Analysis of the Spam Value Chain. Oakland 2011.
Week 2	10/04	Denial of Service [Slides]	D. Moore, G. Voelker, S. Savage. Inferring Internet Denial-of-Service Activity. SEC 2001. M. Antonakakis et al. Understanding the Mirai Botnet. SEC 2017.
Week 3	10/09	Applied Cryptography (TLS/SSL/HTTPS) [Slides]	M. Georgiev, S. Iyengar, S. Jana, R. Anubhai, D. Boneh, and V. Shmatikov. The most dangerous code in the world: validating SSL certificates in non-browser software. CCS 2012. D. Adrian et al. Imperfect Forward Secrecy: How Diffie-Hellman Fails in Practice. CCS 2015.
	10/11	Usable Security	L Cranor. A Framework for Reasoning about the Human in the Loop. UpSEC 2008. D. Akhawe and A. Felt. Alice in Warningland: A Large-Scale Field Study of Browser Security Warning Effectiveness. SEC 2013.
	10/13	Project Proposal Due	Submit your Project Proposal by 5:00pm on Gradescope. One submission per group.
Week 4	10/16	Software Security (Attacks)	L. Szekeres, M. Payer, T. Wei, D. Song. SoK: Eternal War in Memory. Oakland 2013. A. Bittau, A. Belay, A. Mashtizadeh, D. Mazieres, D. Boneh. Hacking Blind. Oakland 2014.
Week 4	10/18	Software Security (Defenses)	B Yee et al. Native Client: A Sandbox for Portable, Untrusted x86 Native Code. Oakland 2009. G. Klees, A. Ruef, B. Cooper, S. Wei, M. Hicks. Evaluating Fuzz Testing. CCS 2018.
Week 5	10/23	Intrusion Detection	R. Sommer and V. Paxson. Outside the Closed World: On Using Machine Learning For Network Intrusion Detection. Oakland 2010. G. Ho, A. Sharma, M. Javed, V. Paxson, D. Wagner. Detecting credential spearphishing attacks in enterprise settings. Usenix Security 2017.
Week 5	10/25	No Class	Preliminary project reports are due next week. Use the extra time this week to work on your related work reading and report write-up.
Week 6	10/30	Preliminary Project Report Due	Submit your preliminary project report by 11:59pm on Gradescope. One report per group.
	10/30	Project Check-in Meetings	Each group will meet with me to discuss the progress of your project. Prepare to discuss the milestones that have been completed or are in-progress, and any obstacles or challenges that are making progress difficult.
	11/01	Side-channels and Hardware Security	D. Song, D. Wagner, X. Tia. Timing Analysis of Keystrokes and Timing Attacks on SSH. Usenix Security 2001. P. Kocher et al. Spectre Attacks: Exploiting Speculative Execution. Oakland 2019.
Week 7	11/06	Privacy and Censorship	R. Dingledine, N. Mathewson, P. Syverson. Tor: The Second-Generation Onion Router. Usenix Security 2004. A. Mathur et al. Dark Patterns at Scale: Findings from a Crawl of 11K Shopping Websites. CSCW 2019.
Week 7	11/08	Trust, Safety, and Political Attacks	K. Thomas et al. SoK: Hate, Harassment, and the Changing Landscape of Online Abuse. Oakland 2021. B. Marczak, J. Scott-Railton, M. Marquis-Boire, V. Paxson. When Governments Hack Opponents: A Look at Actors and Technology. Usenix Security 2014.
Week 8	11/13	AI/ML & Security	N. Carlini and D. Wagner. Towards Evaluating the Robustness of Neural Networks. Oakland 2016. N. Carlini. Reflecting on "Towards Evaluating the Robustness of Neural Networks". [No Write-up].
Week 8	11/15	Cyberphysical Security	S. Checkoway et al. Comprehensive Experimental Analyses of Automotive Attack Surfaces. Usenix Security 2011.
Week 9	11/20	Thanksgiving Break!
Week 9	11/22	Thanksgiving Break!
Week 10	11/27	The Science and Ethics of Security & Privacy	C. Herley and P.C. Van Oorschot. SoK: Science, Security and the Elusive Goal of Security as a Scientific Pursuit. Oakland 2017. A. Burstein. Conducting Cybersecurity Research Legally and Ethically. LEET 2008.
Week 10	11/29	Final Project Presentations
Week 11	12/04	Final Project Presentations
	12/08	Final Project Report Due	Submit your group's final project report by 5:00pm on Gradescope.

Schedule and Assignments (Fall 2023)