CSCI-4530 / CSCI-5530 Computer Security

Saint Louis University

Class Schedule

Class notes (often slides) will be posted as soon as possible after each lecture. I do not post slides before lectures since I use them to reinforce learning points and post solutions to engaging quizzes. The slides are not nearly as complete or polished as the associated readings from the book or other material I will assign. In truth, they exist mostly to provide a brief outline of the day's lecture, or to give you pointers on topics we covered. Students are expected to read the associated sections of the book. If my notes or slides include material that is not in the book, I will explicitly add other references. When I do not add any other material, you should not expect to be tested on these extra topics.

Here below a tentative schedule, subject to small changes.

All assignments have been posted on Canvas. All slides are posted on our class slack channel.

Date Topic Resources Assignments
Tue Jan 18 Class Intro and Intro to Security Concepts Join the Class Slack Channel No-Tech Hacking Article (for HW1)
Thu Jan 20 Intro to Galois Fields and Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)

Tue Jan 25
Symmetric Crypto and DES details

Thu Jan 27
Intro to Galois Fields and Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Galois Field in Crypto

Tue Feb 1
Asymmetric crypto (RSA)

Thu Feb 3
no class

Tue Feb 8
RSA attacks, D-H and Elliptic Curve Crypto (ECC)

Thu Feb 10
Crypto Review

Tue Feb 15
Intro to networks and physical layer security

Thu Feb 17
Layer 2 and its vulnerabilities

Tue Feb 22
Layer 3: Attacks to ARP and IP

Thu Feb 24
Digital Signatures

Thu Mar 3
Secure Hash Functions

Tue Mar 8
Dr. Tooska Dargahi (guest lecture)

Thu Mar 10
Midterm Exam

Tue Mar 15
Spring Break

Thu Mar 17
Spring Break

Tue Mar 22
SHA-1 details and HMAC

Thu Mar 24
IPSec

Tue Mar 29
Live Authentication and Certificate Authorities

Thu Mar 31
Transport Layer Security

Tue Apr 5
TLS details and Intro to DNS

Thu Apr 7
DNSSEC and Intro to BGP

Tue Apr 12
BGP Security

Thu Apr 14
No Class (Easter Break)
See SLU Calendar

Tue Apr 19
Intro to Software Defined Infrastructures and DB

Thu Apr 21
SQL Injections

Tue Apr 26
Cloud Security and intro to malware

Thu Apr 28
Ransomware and buffer overflow

Tue May 3
Review for Final exam: part 1 of 2

Thu May 5
Review for Final exam: part 2 of 2

Thu May 12
Final Exam: from noon to 1:50pm Same room as class Final Exam Schedule