CS 5435: Security and Privacy Concepts in the Wild

Cornell Tech, Fall 2014 

Instructor: Ari Juels
TA: Sidharth Telang
Course Location: Cornell Tech, Touchdown
Meeting Times: TuWe, 1:25 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.
Office Hours: After class and by appointment

Overview

This course will impart a technical and social understanding of how and why security and privacy matter, how to think adversarially, how (and how not) to design systems and products. Less attention will be paid to specific skills such as hacking, writing secure code, and security administration. Topics will include user authentication, cryptography, malware, behavioral economics in security, human factors in security, privacy and anonymity, side channels, decoys and deception, and adversarial modeling. We will explore these concepts by studying real-world systems and attacks, including Bitcoin, Stuxnet, retailer breaches, implantable medical devices, and health apps, and considering issues to come in personal genomics, virtual worlds, and robots.

Prerequisites

Basic programming skills and an introductory course on discrete structures and / or algorithms (e.g., CS 2800 or CS 4820). You may take the course without these prerequisites, but must convince the instructor that you have adequate background.

Enrollment is limited to master’s-level standing at Cornell Tech.