CSC 6991 Topics in Computer Security

Fall 2016 --- Fengwei Zhang

  • Instructor: Fengwei Zhang
  • Class Location: Prentis Building (PREN) 0015
  • Class Time: Monday, Wednesday 11:00AM - 12:20PM
  • Syllabus: [PDF]
  • Office Hours: Monday, Wednesday 10:00AM - 11:00AM
  • Office Address: Maccabees Building, Room 14109.3
  • Homepage: http://fengwei.me
  • Email: fengwei (at) wayne (dot) edu

Course Description

The course is designed for students interested in computer security research and helps them get started. It will focus on computer security research topics including system security, web security, mobile security, authentication and password management, privacy and anonymity, hardware security, and attacks. The course centers around readings and discussions; it has a term project. Students are expected to read the assigned papers, write paper summaries, and present papers. The term project is essentially a mini research project that involves building a new system, improving an existing technique, or performing a large case study.

Course Objectives

This course offers an in depth introduction to computer security research. Upon successful completion of this class, the student will gain experience in:

Prerequisite

CSC4290 (Introduction to Computer Networking), CSC4420 (Computer Operating Systems), and CSC5270 (Computer Systems Security); or permission of the instructor.

Grading Policy

Academic Dishonesty

Please read and adhere to the University's Academic Integrity Page and WSU Student Code of Conduct.

Student Disabilities Services

If you have a documented disability that requires accommodations, you will need to register with Student Disability Services for coordination of your academic accommodations. The Student Disability Services (SDS) office is located in the Adamany Undergraduate Library. The SDS telephone number is 313-577-1851 or 313-202-4216 (Videophone use only).

Tenative Class Schedule

Date Topic Reading & Notes (tentative) Speaker
Week 1, 08/31 Course overview
  • How to Read an Engineering Research Paper. William G. Griswold. [Link]
  • Writing Technical Papers in CS/EE. Henning Schulzrinne. [Link]
  • The Elements of Style. Strunk and White. [Link]
 Fengwei Zhang
[Slides]
Week 2, 09/05 No Class
  • Holiday -- Labor Day
Week 2, 09/07 Hardware Isolated Execution Environments Assigned:
  • SoK: A Study of Using Hardware-assisted Isolated Execution Environments for Security. Fengwei Zhang and Hongwei Zhang. In HASP'16. [Link]
Optional:
  • Using Hardware Isolated Execution Environments for Securing Systems, Fengwei Zhang, Ph.D. Thesis. [Link]
 Fengwei Zhang
[Slides]
Week 3, 09/12 Transparent Malware Analysis I Assigned:
  • Using Hardware Features for Increased Debugging Transparency. Fengwei Zhang, Kevin Leach, Angelos Stavrou, Haining Wang, and Kun Sun. In S&P'15. [Link]
Optional:
  • MalGene: Automatic Extraction of Malware Analysis Evasion Signature. Dhilung Kirat and Giovanni Vigna. In CCS'15. [Link]
Fengwei Zhang
[Slides]
Week 3, 09/14 Transparent Malware Analysis II Assigned:
  • LO-PHI: Low-Observable Physical Host Instrumentation for Malware Analysis. Chad Spensky, Hongyi Hu, and Kevin Leach. In NDSS'16. [Link]
Optional:
  • Evading Android Runtime Analysis via Sandbox Detection. Timothy Vidas and Nicolas Christin. In AsiaCCS'14. [Link]
  • BareDroid: Large-Scale Analysis of Android Apps on Real Devices. Simone Mutti, Yanick Fratantonio, Antonio Bianchi, Luca Invernizzi, Jacopo Corbetta, Dhilung Kirat, Christopher Kruegel, Giovanni Vigna. In ACSAC'15. [Link]
Guest: Chad Spensky
[Slides]
Week 4, 09/19 Intel SGX I Assigned:
  • Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX) Support for Dynamic Memory Management Inside an Enclave Frank McKeen, Ilya Alexandrovich, Ittai Anati, Dror Caspi, Simon Johnson, Rebekah Leslie-Hurd, Carlos Rozas. In HASP'16. [Link]
Optional:
  • Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX) Tutorial. In ISCA'15 [Link]
  • Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX) Software Support for Dynamic Memory Allocation Inside an Enclave Bin (Cedric) Xing, Mark Shanahan, Rebekah Leslie-Hurd. In HASP'16 [Link]
Saeid Mofrad
[Slides]
Week 4, 09/21 Denial of Service (DoS) Attack Assigned:
  • Catch Me if You Can: A Cloud-Enabled DDoS Defense. Quan Jia, Huangxin Wang, Dan Fleck, Fei Li, Angelos Stavrou, Walter Powell. In ACM DSN'14. [Link]
Optional:
  • Low-Rate TCP-Targeted Denial of Service Attacks (The Shrew vs. the Mice and Elephants). Aleksandar Kuzmanovic and Edward W. Knightly. In ACM SIGCOMM'03. [Link]
Mikal Fourrier
[Slides]
Week 5, 09/26 Car Hacking I Assigned:
  • Lock It and Still Lose It - On the (In)Security of Automotive Remote Keyless Entry Systems. Flavio D. Garcia, David Oswald, Timo Kasper, and Pierre Pavlidès. In UsenixSecurity'16. [Link]
Optional:
  • Remote Exploitation of an Unaltered Passenger Vehicle. Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek. In BlackHat USA'15. [Link]
Yang Zhang
Week 5, 09/28 Car Hacking II Assigned:
  • Fingerprinting Electronic Control Units for Vehicle Intrusion Detection. Kyong-Tak Cho and Kang G. Shin. In UsenixSecurity'16. [Link]
Optional:
  • Comprehensive Experimental Analyses of Automotive Attack Surfaces. Stephen Checkoway, Damon McCoy, Brian Kantor, Danny Anderson, Hovav Shacham, Stefan Savage, Karl Koscher, Alexei Czeskis, Franziska Roesner, and Tadayoshi Kohno. In UsenixSecurity'11. [Link]
Yang Zhang
Week 6, 10/03 Ransomware Project Proposals Due

Assigned:
  • UNVEIL: A Large-Scale, Automated Approach to Detecting Ransomware. Amin Kharaz, Sajjad Arshad, Collin Mulliner, William Robertson, and Engin Kirda. In UsenixSecurity'16. [Link]
Optional:
  • CryptoLock (and Drop It): Stopping Ransomware Attacks on User Data. Nolen Scaife, Henry Carter, Patrick Traynor, and Kevin Butler. In ICDCS'16 [Link]
Yashar Dehkan Asl
[Slides]
Week 6, 10/05 Term Project Proposal
  • Proposal Presentations and Discussion
Week 7, 10/10 Hardware Supported Security Assigned:
  • CaSE: Cache-Assisted Secure Execution on ARM Processors. Ning Zhang, Kun Sun, and Wenjing Lou, and Y. Thomas Hou. In S&P'16. [Link]
Optional:
  • Breaking Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization with Intel TSX. Yeongjin Jang, Sangho Lee, and Taesoo Kim. In CCS'16. [Link]
Guest: Dr. Ning Zhang
[Slides]
Week 7, 10/12 Plausibly Deniable Encryption (PDE) Assigned:
  • DEFY: A Deniable, Encrypted File System for Log-Structured Storage. Timothy M. Peters, Mark A. Gondree, and Zachary N. J. Peterson. In NDSS'15. [Link]
Optional:
  • MobiPluto: File System Friendly Deniable Storage for Mobile Devices. Bing Chang, Zhan Wang, Bo Chen, and Fengwei Zhang. In ACSAC'15. [Link]
  • Mobiflage: Deniable Storage Encryptionfor Mobile Devices. Adam Skillen and Mohammad Mannan. In NDSS'13 and TDSC'14. [Link]
Fengwei Zhang
[Slides]
Week 8, 10/17 TrustZone on ARM Assigned:
  • TrustOTP: Transforming Smartphones into Secure One-Time Password Tokens. He Sun, Kun Sun, Yuewu Wang, Jiwu Jing. In CCS'15. [Link]
Optional:
  • SKEE: A lightweight Secure Kernel-level Execution Environment for ARM. Ahmed Azab, Kirk Swidowski, Rohan Bhutkar, Jia Ma, Wenbo Shen, Ruowen Wang and Peng Ning. In NDSS'16. [Link]
  • Hypervision Across Worlds: Real-time Kernel Protection from the ARM TrustZone Secure World. Ahmed Azab, Peng Ning, Jitesh Shah, Quan Chen, Rohan Bhutkar, Guruprasad Ganesh, Jia Ma, and Wenbo Shen. In CCS'14. [Link]
 Fengwei Zhang
[Slides]
Week 8, 10/19 Semantic Gap, Memory Introspection Assigned:
  • SPECTRE: A Dependable Introspection Framework via System Management Mode. Fengwei Zhang, Kevin Leach, Kun Sun, and Angelos Stavrou. In DSN'13. [Link]
Optional:
  • SoK: Introspections on Trust and the Semantic Gap. Bhushan Jain, Mirza Basim Baig, Dongli Zhang, Donald E. Porter, and Radu Sion. In S&P'14. [Link]
 Fengwei Zhang
[Slides]
Week 9, 10/24 Android Security I Assigned:
  • TaintART: A Practical Multi-level Information-Flow Tracking System for Android RunTime. Mingshen Sun, Tao Wei, and John C.S. Lui. In CCS'16. [Link]
Sudeep Nanjappa Jayakumar
[Slides]
Week 10, 10/26 Cache Security Assigned:
  • Cache Games - Bringing Access-Based Cache Attacks on AES to Practice. Endre Bangerter, David Gullasch, and Stephan Krenn. In S&P'11. [Link]
Optional:
  • S$A: A Shared Cache Attack that Works Across Cores and Defies VM Sandboxing-and its Application to AES. Gorka Irazoqui, Thomas Eisenbarth, and Berk Sunar. In S&P'15. [Link]
 Mikal Fourrier
[Slides]
Week 10, 10/31 Android Security II Assigned:
  • Going Native: Using a Large-Scale Analysis of Android Apps to Create a Practical Native-Code Sandboxing Policy. Vitor Afonso, Paulo de Geus, Antonio Bianchi, Yanick Fratantonio, Christopher Kruegel, Giovanni Vigna, Adam Doupe, and Mario Polino . In NDSS'16. [Link]
Sudeep Nanjappa Jayakumar
[Slides]
Week 10, 11/02 IoT Security Assigned:
  • FlowFence: Practical Data Protection for Emerging IoT Application Frameworks. Earlence Fernandes, Justin Paupore, Amir Rahmati, Daniel Simionato, Mauro Conti, and Atul Prakash. In UsenixSecurity'16. [Link]
Optional:
  • Security Analysis of Emerging Smart Home Applications. Earlence Fernandes, Jaeyeon Jung, and Atul Prakash. In S&P'16. [Link]
Mikal Fourrier
[Slides]
Week 11, 11/07 Term Project Discussion
  • Working Class for Term Project (Q & A)
Week 11, 11/09 Intel SGX II Assigned:
  • SCONE: Secure Linux Containers with Intel SGX. Sergei Arnautov, Bohdan Trach, Franz Gregor, Thomas Knauth, Andre Martin, Christian Priebe, Joshua Lind, Divya Muthukumaran, Daniel O'Keeffe, Mark L Stillwell, David Goltzsche, Dave Eyers, Rüdiger Kapitza, Peter Pietzuch, and Christof Fetzer. In OSDI'16. [Link]
Optional:
  • AsyncShock: Exploiting Synchronisation Bugs in Intel SGX Enclaves. Nico Weichbrodt, Anil Kurmus, Peter Pietzuch and Rudiger Kapitza. In ESORICS'16. [Link]
 Saeid Mofrad
[Slides]
Week 12, 11/14 Systems Security
  • Research Projects in COMPASS lab
Guest: Zhengyu Ning
Week 12, 11/16 Firmware Security Assigned:
  • A Large-Scale Analysis of the Security of Embedded Firmwares. Andrei Costin, Jonas Zaddach, Aurelien Francillon, and Davide Balzarotti. In UsenixSecurity'14. [Link]
Optional:
  • Thunderstrike: EFI firmware bootkits for Apple MacBooks. Trammell Hudson. In 31C3. [Link]
 Saeid Mofrad
[Slides]
Week 13, 11/21 BlockChain Assigned:
  • Hawk: The Blockchain Model of Cryptography and Privacy-Preserving Smart Contracts. Ahmed Kosba, Andrew Miller, Elaine Shi, Zikai Wen, and Charalampos Papamanthou. In S&P'16. [Link]
Optional:
  • On the Security and Performance of Proof of Work Blockchains. Arthur Gervais, Ghassan O. Karame, Karl Wüst, Vasileios Glykantzis, Hubert Ritzdorf and Srdjan Capkun. In CCS'16. [Link]
Yashar Dehkan Asl
[Slides]
Week 13, 11/25 No Class
  • Holiday -- Thanksgiving
Week 14, 11/28 Android Malware Unpacking Assigned:
  • AppSpear: Bytecode Decrypting and DEX Reassembling for Packed Android Malware. Wenbo Yang; Juanru Li; Bodong Li; Junliang Shu; Wenjun Hu; Yuanyuan Zhang; Dawu Gu. In RAID'15. [Link]
Optional:
  • DexHunter: Toward Extracting Hidden Code from Packed Android Applications. Yueqian Zhang, Xiapu Luo, Haoyang Yin. In ESORICS'15. [Link]
 Sudeep Nanjappa Jayakumar
[Slides]
Week 14, 11/30 Moving Target Defense Assigned:
  • Survey of Cyber Moving Targets. H. Okhravi, M.A. Rabe, T.J. Mayberry, W.G. Leonard, T.R. Hobson, D. Bigelow, W.W. Streilein. Technical Report, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, 2013. [Link]
Yashar Dehkan Asl
[Slides]
Week 15, 12/05 Term Project Discussion
  • Working Class for Term Project Demo (Q & A)
Fengwei Zhang
[Slides]
Week 15, 12/07 Term Project Presentations
Week 16, 12/12 Term Project Presentations Project Final Reports Due