CS 315 Computer Security: Fengwei Zhang

CS 315 Computer Security

Fall 2024 -- Fengwei Zhang

Instructor: Fengwei Zhang
Class Time: Monday 10:20PM - 12:10PM
Class Location: Room 301, Teaching Building I
Lab Time: Monday, 16:20PM - 06:10PM
Lab Location: Room 508, Teaching Building III

Syllabus: [PDF]
Office Address: Engineering Building, South Tower, Room 515
Homepage: http://cse.sustech.edu.cn/faculty/~zhangfw
Email: zhangfw (at) sustech (dot) edu (dot) cn

Course Description

This course aims help students to learn the principles of computer security and understand how various security attacks and countermeasures work. It provides hands-on experience in playing with security software and network systems in a live laboratory environment, with the purpose of understating real-world threats. The course will take both offensive and defense methods to help student explore security tools and attacks in practice. It will focus on attacks (e.g., buffer overflow, dirty COW, format-string, XSS, and return oriented programming), hacking fundamentals (e.g., scanning and reconnaissance), defenses (e.g., intrusion detection systems and firewalls). Students are expected to finish intensive lab assignments that use real-world malware, exploits, and defenses

Course Objectives

This course offers an in depth experience of real-world threats and defenses. Upon successful completion of this class, the student will gain experience in:

Understanding on real-world security vulnerabilities, exploits and defenses
Having hands-on labs in network and system security experiments
Learning knowledge of practical security problems and their solutions

Prerequisites

Familiar with Unix/Linux systems; or permission of the instructor.

Recommended Book

Wenliang Du, Computer Security: A Hands-on Approach, 3rd Edition (ISBN: 978-17330039-5-7)

Grading Policy

The grades for the course will be based upon the tables given below

Topics	Grade
Class Participation	40
Lab 1: Computer Security Introduction	60
Lab 2: Secure Coding and Buffer Overflows	60
Lab 3: Secure Coding and Format-String Vulnerability	60
Lab 4: Secure Coding and Format-String Vulnerability	60
Lab 5: Return-to-libc and Return Oriented Programming	60
Lab 6: Fuzzing and Program Analysis	60
Lab 7: Cryptography	60
Lab 8: Network Packet Sniffing	60
Lab 9: Web Security and SQL Injection	60
Lab 10: Scanning, Reconnaissance, and Penetration Testing	60
Lab 11: IoT, Wireless and Phyiscal Attacks	60
Lab 12: Nailgun Attack and Defense	60
Term Project Proposal	60
Term Project Progress Meetings	60
Term Project Presentation	60
Term Project Report	60
Total	1000

Gradding Scale

A+	97 - 100%	C+	77 - 79%
A	93 - 96%	C	73 - 76%
A-	90 - 92%	C-	70 - 72%
B+	87 - 89%	D+	67 - 69%
B	83 - 86%	D	63 - 66%
B-	80 - 82%	D-	60 - 62%
F	0 - 59%

Academic Dishonesty

Please read and fill the Undergraduate Students Assignment Delcaration Form in Chinese and English. More details on Regulations.

Student Disabilities Services

If you have a documented disability that requires accommodations, you will need to register with the University for coordination of your academic accommodations, or let me know.

Class Schedule

Date	Topic	Reading & Notes (tentative)	Slides & Labs
Week 01, 09/09	Course overview and Packet Sniffing	Computer network basics. Kali Linux - Penetration Testing Linux Distribution. [Link] Wireshark: Network protocol analyzer. [Link] TCPDump and LibPCAP. [Link] Packet Sniffing Basics. In Linux Journal. [Link]	[Slides and Lab]
Week 02, 09/14	Secure Coding and Buffer Overflows	Lab 1 Due Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit. Aleph One. In Phrack Volume 7, Issue 49. [Link] Local Stack Overflow (Basic Module). [Link] Debugging Under Unix: gdb Tutorial. [Link] Understanding DEP/NX [Link] DynaGuard: Armoring Canary-based Protections against Brute-force Attacks. Theofilos Petsios, Vasileios P. Kemerlis, Michalis Polychronakis, and Angelos D. Keromytis. In ACSAC'15. [Link] 中秋节：9月15日至9月17日放假，共3天。9月14日（周六）为工作日，上双周周一的课。	[Slides and Lab]
Week 03, 09/23	Secure Coding and Format-String Vulnerability	Lab 2 Due Chapter 6 of the recommended book -- Wenliang Du, Computer Security: A Hands-on Approach.	[Slides and Lab]
Week 04, 09/30	Term/Team Project Proposal Discussion	Term/Team Project Proposal Due Lab 3 Due	[Slides and Lab]
Week 05, 10/07	NO CLASS	National Holiday
Week 06, 10/14	Scanning, Reconnaissance, and Penetration Testing	Nmap: the Network Mapper - Free Security Scanner. [Link] Nmap man page. [Link] OpenVAS: Open Vulnerability Assessment System. [Link] Setting up OpenVAS on Kali Linux. [Link] NESSUS: Vulnerability Scanner. [Link] ZMap: Fast Internet-Wide Scanning and its Security Applications. Zakir Durumeric, Eric Wustrow, and J. Alex Halderman. In UsenixSecurity'13. [Link] Souce Code. [Link] Metasploit Framework Project Page. [Link] Metasploitable2 (Linux). [Link] Armitage: Cyber Attack Management for Metasploit. [Link]	[Slides and Lab]
Week 07, 10/21	Reverse Engineering and Obfuscation	Lab 4 Due DexLego: Reassembleable Bytecode Extraction for Aiding Static Analysis. Zhenyu Ning and Fengwei Zhang In DSN'18. [Link] DexHunter: Toward Extracting Hidden Code from Packed Android Applications. Yueqian Zhang, Xiapu Luo , Haoyang Yin. In ESORICS'15. [Link] Android Software Development Kit (SDK) [Link] smali/baksmali: an assembler/disassembler for the Dex. [Link]	[Slides and Lab]
Week 08, 10/28	Web Security	Lab 5 Due Chapter 9, 10 of the recommended book -- Wenliang Du, Computer Security: A Hands-on Approach.	[Slides and Lab]
Week 09, 11/04	Nailgun Attack	Lab 6 Due Nailgun Attack Paper [Link] Communication of CCF [Link] Nailgun project webistie [Link] PoC source code [Link] Demo Video 1 [Link] Demo Vidoe 2 [Link] CVE Number: 2018-18068 [Link]	[Slides and Lab]
Week 10, 11/11	Nailgun Defense	Nailgun Defense Paper [Link]	[Slides and Lab]
Week 11, 11/18	Trusted Execution Environment (TEE)	Labs 7 and 8 Due	[Slides and Lab]
Week 12, 11/25	Dirty COW Attack	Lab 9 Due	[Slides and Lab]
Week 13, 12/02	Kernel Security	Lab 10 Due	[Slides and Lab]
Week 14, 12/09	Return-to-libc and Return Oriented Programming	Lab 11 Due The Geometry of Innocent Flesh on the Bone: Return-into-libc without Function Calls (on the x86). Hovav Shacham. In CCS'07. [Link] Chapter 5 of the recommended book -- Wenliang Du, Computer Security: A Hands-on Approach.	[Slides and Lab]
Week 15, 12/16	Security Research and Term Project Discussion	Lab 12 Due	[Research Slides]
Week 16, 12/23	Term/Team Project Presentations	Final Project Report Due Invited Lunch/Dinner if your final score is 96% or more	[Slides and Lab]