ABOUT
Since the
development of time-sharing computer systems 50+ years ago,
computer scientists have been working on how to secure them.
Today, the computer security industry is massive.
Participants across government, academia, and industry are
making significant investments and producing impressive
technology. Given all this, are computer systems actually
getting more secure? How would we know? What research and
other work is being done to both understand and address the
situation?
This is a seminar course that aims to address these
questions. Our main activity will be to read and discuss
papers from the research literature, as well as blog posts,
whitepapers, and the occasional textbook chapter. Students
will be expected to read 1-2 papers per class and to submit
a short review on each paper prior to class, to set the
table for discussion.
Students will also have the opportunity to present papers to
the class (how many depends in part on the class size), and
receive feedback. We will also have guest lectures from
experts in the field. The culmination of the course's work
will be a deep-dive, final project.
TEXTBOOKS
There are no
required texts. See the
schedule
for papers and handouts.