• Definitions of security
• Define adversary model, threat model, and security model
• Create and critique security models for familiar systems
• Define: confidentiality, integrity, availability, asset, participant, vulnerability, threat, adversary, defense, authorization, authentication
• List, Define, and Identify types of attacker (i.e. casual user, cybercriminals, nation-state,
etc.)
• List, Define, and Identify the four archetype attacks and the five archetype defenses
• Create and and articulate threat models for well-understood systems
• Define the principle of adequate protection
• Define: cryptology, cryptography, cryptanalysis, plaintext, ciphertext, encryption, decryption, key, keyspace, perfect secrecy
• Define Kirckhoffs’s principle and why cryptosystems should conform to it
• Identify key management problems
• Explain OTP, how it offers perfect secrecy, and list issues that complicate its use
• Give examples of how crypto systems fail in practice (From the Anderson Paper)
• NOT: Understand symmetric cipher internals
• Define stream cipher, block cipher, block size, permutation, substitution, confusion, diffusion
• Explain the distinction between stream and block ciphers
• List and explain potential problems with using stream ciphers
• Explain, diagram, and identify pros and cons of ECB, CBC, and CTR cipher modes
• Choose an application-appropriate symmetric cipher and mode.
• Identify which cipher modes guarantee integrity
• Create cryptographic constructions that provide integrity and authenticity
• Identify and explain the three properties of a cryptographic hash function
• Explain the significance of the birthday paradox to hash function security
• Explain how HMAC works and why it is needed
• Identify at least three applications of hash functions
• Explain common uses of RSA
• Explain the components of RSA public and private keys and their relationship
• Given a small public/private key, encrypt/decrypt a message using RSA
• Identify and explain the hard problem underlying RSA
• Explain digital signatures, common uses, and compute a digital signature given a small RSA public/private key pair
• Explain the differences between a digital signature and an HMAC
• Explain the uses of Diffie-Hellman
• Given a small modulus and base, complete both steps of a DH exchange
• Identify and explain the hard problem underlying DH
• Define and explain perfect forward secrecy
• Explain Public Key Infrastructures and potential problems with their use
• Explain the tradeoffs between “web of trust” and PKI models
• Define authentication, credential (and 3 types)
• Define and explain multi-factor authentication
• Identify and explain common problems, attacks and defenses related to passwords and secret questions, including online and offline brute-force attacks
• Identify examples of bearer-authenticators (“something you have”)
• Identify examples of biometric authenticators and explain issues with their use
• Explain web authentication protocols and security issues with their use
• Explain cryptographic authentication protocols
• Design and critique cryptographic authentication protocols
– How to study: look at questions at end of KPS Chapter 11
– Explain why a protocol authenticates a party
– Identify flaws in a protocol (e.g., reflection, replay attacks)
• Explain how tickets can provide single sign-on (SSO)
• Explain attacks and defenses for:
– TCP/IP message spoofing
– sequence number guessing
– source routing
– other routing attacks
– ICMP attacks (including “ping of death”)
– ARP spoofing
• Explain the “simplified” SSL protocol presented in class
• Identify, explain, and compare key exchange methods
• Explain and identify the six values generated for sessions
• Explain the differences between server and mutual authentication
• Identify attacks that circumvent SSL and/or TLS
• Identify and explain two main types of VPNs
• Identify, explain, and draw packets for the two modes and two protocols of IPsec packet processing (four total options)
– Describe the protection provided to different fields
• Define SA, SPI, SAD, SA Bundle, SPD
• Describe the two phases of IKE
• Describe the advantages and disadvantages of a split VPN
• Define and compare stateless and stateful firewalls
• Write a firewall policy (stateless or stateful) given a set of requirements
– Evaluate a firewall a policy for a given packet
• Define and compare signature vs. anomaly IDS
• Define and apply the base rate fallacy
• Draw ROC curves for a given detection system
• Identify threats to DNS
• Explain how DNS cache poisoning works (“vanilla” and “Kaminsky”)
• Identify defenses against DNS attacks
• Explain common routing security issues
– Link cutting
– Hijacking
– Denial of service
• Explain and Identify the principle security problems with BGP, including lack of authentication and how prefix highjacking is conducted.
• Explain the mechanism and impacts of prominent BGP security incidents
• Explain, compare, and contrast the different proposed solutions to defend BGP, including S-BGP and RPKI.
• Express access control as subjects, objects, rights (SOR model) and draw an access control matrix
• Explain the three properties of a reference monitor (tamperproof, complete mediation, simple enough to verify)
• Explain the principle of least privilege, protection domain, protection state, and protection state operations
• Compare and contrast MAC and DAC and relate the safety problem
• Explain why RBAC is different than groups
• Evaluate simple information flow control policies (e.g., BLP, Biba)
• Identify practical issue with Clark Wilson
• Compare and contrast ACLs and C-Lists, and identify when to use them.
• Describe the basics of UNIX file system access control, including setuid
• Explain the implication of monotonicity of access control policy w.r.t. checking and defining policy
• Explain how capabilities address the confused deputy problem
• Describe how to protect capabilities
• Describe how Hydra uses capabilities and the implications
• Evaluate Multics access control policy using rings and brackets
• Construct protocols for cookie-based authentication
• Identify the limitation of code-signing (e.g., Authenticode)
• Describe different injection attacks (e.g., XSS, shell, filename, SQL) and fundamental cause
• Describe solutions to injection attacks
• Describe Same Origin Policy (SOP) and limitations
• Describe Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS), including where it is enforced and the implications
• Describe modern browser architecture and isolations
• Explain how browser extensions can impact security
• Describe how mobile OSes differ from traditional Oses
• Explain the importance of app security for smartphones
• Explain methods and goals of mobile malware
• Describe privacy problems in mobile apps
• Contrast app permission models (install-time vs. runtime)
• Explain the challenge of authentication on mobile devices
• Compare and contrast static analysis and dynamic analysis approaches for analyzing apps
• Explain the significance of metadata for security / privacy
• Explain the Dining Cryptographer’s problem
• Identify hardness assumptions (unconditional anonymity vs. computational anonymity)
• Calculate degree of anonymity with sets and Shannon entropy (and know limitations)
• Critique anonymizing proxies, Crowds, Onion Routing
• Describe how anonymity systems can enable security attacks
• Explain the significance of the referrer field to privacy
• Describe the general rules for sending information to a Web server (and implications of getting it wrong)
• Describe how Cookies are used for tracking (1st party vs 3rd party)
• Describe Evercookies, Flash cookies, etc.
• Explain how stateless tracking / fingerprinting works
• Explain how advertising frameworks can be abused to target individuals
• Describe the different types of advertising models
• Describe tracking defenses, naming several
• Explain what “Do Not Track” provides, and how this differs from common perception
• Describe different techniques for private browsing and their caveats
• Explain the challenges with self reporting (e.g., privacy paradox)
• Explain the challenges with framing
• Describe privacy segmentation techniques (e.g., Westin Index) and limitations
• Describe privacy nudges
• Explain why privacy harms are important to define and measure
• Describe the AOL search log problem and its generalization
• Explain collaborative filtering
• Describe k-anonymity (at a high level) and its shortcomings
• Describe l-diversity (at a high level) and its shortcomings
• Describe t-closeness (at a high level) and its shortcomings
• Describe differential privacy (at a high level)