ITIS 3200: Introduction to Information Security and Privacy

Information security and privacy has played an important role in our daily lives. In this course, we are going to present the building blocks in this literature and how these simple yet neat ideas can be combined to construct security mechanisms. We will introduce security and privacy from policy, implementation, and enforcement aspects. We will introduce the building blocks such as encryption and authentication. We will also discuss the topics in network, system, software, and user security. Some state-of-the-art problems will also be introduced.

Syllabus

Week 1: Introduction, Some interesting security research

Homework 1: due September 2nd, 2008 before class.

Week 2: Chap 1, Chap 2, Chap 4

Week 3: Chap 5, Chap 6

Homework 2: due September 16th, 2008 before class.

Week 4: Chap 7

Week 5 and 6: Chap 8, Part 1.

Homework 3: due September 30th, 2008 before class.

Week 7: Chap 8, Part 2.

Homework 4: due October 21st, 2008 before class.

Week 8: Fall Break.

Week 9: Important knowledge points of the first 8 chapters.

Week 10: Midterm Exam.

Week 11: Chap 9.

Week 12: Chap 9, Chap 11.

Homework 5: due November 25th, 2008 before class.

Week 13:

Week 14: Chap 11. Chap 12. Chap 13.

Week 15: Chap 12. Chap 13.

Week 16: Important knowledge points of the whole semester.

Midterm Exam

The midterm exam will be held on Oct 28th, 2008 in class. On Oct 21st, we will run a review session in the class.

Final Exam

The final exam schedule can be found at UNCC webpage. We will run a review session in the class on Dec 9th.

Class Project

Below are several hot topics that can be used for class project. For each topic, please read at least three (3) papers discussing the topics and write your “Midterm report”. In your report you need to make references to the papers you select. The format of the report will be provided later. The three papers can be selected from: any conference proceedings, published books, articles in magazines, formal reports of companies, and reports of government agencies. Wiki, on-line discussion forums, or other sources without formal review procedures can be used as references in your report but will not count as the three papers. For each topic, we provide a link from which you can get started and find papers for your report.

Please write the first report of your project in a 12-pt Times New Roman font, single space, Microsoft word file. The report should be 4 pages or longer. The due date is Oct 21st, 2008 before class.

We provide improvement suggestions to your project report on the last page of the report. Please follow the suggestions to generate your final report. Please write the final report of your project in 12 pt Times New Roman font, single space, Microsoft word file. The report should be at least 2 pages longer than your first report. The due date is Dec 11th, 2008 before final exam.

Topic Topic
Phishing and Anti Phishing: Link Safety of Bluetooth Devices: Link
Filter out spam emails: Link Computer forensics: Link
RFID security: Link Buffer Overflow: Link
Computer Malwares: Link DNS poisoning: Link
Botnet: Link DDoS attacks: Link
Electronic voting system: Link Digital watermarking: Link