System Security AS21
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Autumn semester 2021
Course no. 252-1414-00L, (7 ECTS)
Course responsible: Prof. Srdjan Capkun (), Prof. Adrian Perrig ()
Teaching Assistants: Claudio Anliker, Friederike Groschupp, Daniele Lain, Benjamin Rothenberger ()
Written exam
Performance assessment is based on exercises/reports submitted through the semester (20%) and a session examination at the end of the semester (80%). Details will be discussed at the end of the semester.
Learning objectives
In this lecture, students learn about the security requirements and capabilities that are expected from modern hardware, operating systems and other software environments. An overview of available technologies, algorithms and standards is given, with which these requirements can be met.
Content Description
The first part of the lecture covers individual system's aspects starting with tamperproof or tamperresistant hardware in general over operating system related security mechanisms to application software systems such as host based intrusion detetction systems. The main topics covered are: tamper resistant hardware, CPU support for security, protection mechanisms in the kernel, file system security (permissions / ACLs / network filesystem issues), IPC Security, mechanisms in more modern OS, such as Capabilities and Zones, Libraries and Software tools for security assurance, etc.
In the second part, the focus is on system design and methodologies for building secure systems. Topics include: patch management, common software faults (buffer overflows, etc.), writing secure software (design, architecture, QA, testing), compiler-supported security, language-supported security, logging and auditing (BSM audit, dtrace, ...), cryptographic support, and trustworthy computing (TCG, SGX).
Along the lectures, model cases will be elaborated and evaluated in the exercises.