CMSC 23200: Introduction to Computer Security: Schedule

Week	Date	Topics	Instructor	Due Dates	Readings
Week 1	Wed 1/3	Course Introduction, the Security Mindset, and Threat Modeling [slides]	Blase & Grant	Reading Response 1 due Thursday 1/4	Justin Ellingwood. SSH Essentials: Working with SSH Servers, Clients, and Keys. DigitalOcean, September 17, 2020. Textbook Chapter 1. Sean Gallagher. Securing Your Digital Life, Part One: The Basics. Ars Technica, October 25, 2021. Sean Gallagher. Securing Your Digital Life, Part Two: The Bigger Picture—and Special Circumstances. Ars Technica, October 27, 2021.
Week 2	Mon 1/8	OS Security, Memory Vulnerabilities [slides]	Grant	Reading Response 2 due Tues 1/9	Textbook Sections 5.1-5.7. Textbook Chapter 6.
Week 2	Wed 1/10	Memory Vulnerabilities, Memory Protection [slides]	Grant	Assignment 1 due Thurs 1/11	Textbook Sections 5.1-5.7. Textbook Chapter 6.
Week 3	Mon 1/15	No class in observance of MLK Day	--	Reading Response 3 due Tues 1/16	Textbook Chapter 2. CVE-2020-11500. Dan Goodin. SSH Protects the World's Most Sensitive Networks. It Just Got a Lot Weaker. Ars Technica, December 19, 2023.
Week 3	Wed 1/17	Crypto Tools I [slides]	Grant	Assignment 2 due Thurs 1/18
Week 4	Mon 1/22	Crypto Tools II [slides]	Grant	Reading Response 4 due Tues 1/23	Textbook Section 9.2. Josh Aas et al. Let's Encrypt: An Automated Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web. In Proc. CCS, 2019.
Week 4	Wed 1/24	TLS and X.509 Certificates [slides]	Grant	Assignment 3 due Thurs 1/25
Week 5	Mon 1/29	How the Internet Works [slides]	Blase	Reading Response 5 due Tues 1/30	Textbook Section 10.6. Textbook Sections 11.3-11.6. Celso Martinho and Tom Strickx. Understanding How Facebook Disappeared from the Internet. The Cloudflare Blog, October 4, 2021. Robert McMillan. How Heartbleed Broke the Internet — And Why It Can Happen Again. Wired, April 11, 2014.
Week 5	Wed 1/31	Network Attacks and Defenses [slides]	Blase	Assignment 4 due Thurs 2/1
Week 6	Mon 2/5	How the Web Works [slides]	Blase	Reading Response 6 due Tues 2/6	Textbook Section 9.1. Textbook Sections 9.3-9.7. Eric Portis. I Learned to Love the Same-Origin Policy. CSS Tricks, 2021. James Mickens. To Wash It All Away. USENIX ;login:, March 2014.
Week 6	Wed 2/7	Web Attacks and Defenses [slides]	Blase	Assignment 5 due Thurs 2/8
Week 7	Mon 2/12	Web Privacy and Tracking [slides]	Blase	Reading Response 7 due Tues 2/13	Textbook Section 9.8. Textbook Section 10.1-10.2. Textbook Sections 11.1-11.3. Farhad Manjoo and Nadieh Bremer. I Visited 47 Sites. Hundreds of Trackers Followed Me. New York Times, August 23, 2019. Kashmir Hill. Your Car Is Tracking You. Abusive Partners May Be, Too. New York Times, December 31, 2023.
Week 7	Wed 2/14	Enterprise Security and Intrusion Detection [slides]	Grant	Assignment 6 due Thurs 2/15
Week 8	Mon 2/19	Authentication I [slides]	Blase	Reading Response 8 due Tues 2/20	Textbook Chapter 3. Dan Goodin. Anatomy of a Hack: How Crackers Ransack Passwords Like "qeadzcwrsfxv1331". Ars Technica, May 27, 2013. Ashley Belanger. 23andMe Told Victims of Data Breach That Suing Is Futile, Letter Shows. Ars Technica, January 4, 2024. Matt Burgess. I Stopped Using Passwords. It's Great—and a Total Mess. Wired, February 8, 2024.
Week 8	Wed 2/21	Authentication II [slides]	Blase	Assignment 7 due Thurs 2/22
Week 9	Mon 2/26	Hardware Security [slides]	Blase	Reading Response 9 due Tues 2/27	Brian Krebs. Scary Chip Flaws Raise Spectre of Meltdown. Krebs on Security, January 5, 2018. James Mickens. This World of Ours. USENIX ;login:, January 2014.
Week 9	Wed 2/28	Security in Practice	Special Guests	Assignment 8 due Thurs 2/29. In addition, there will be a closed-book final exam on Wed 3/6 from 8:00pm - 10:00pm.

Schedule and Assignments (Winter 2024)