CS 5435: Security and Privacy in the Wild

Cornell Tech, Fall 2015

Instructor: Ari Juels
TA: Fan Zhang
Course Location: Cornell Tech, Gummi
Meeting Times: TuTh, 10:15 a.m. – 11:30 a.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 attacks and defenses in real-world systems, covering Bitcoin, Stuxnet, retailer breaches, implantable medical devices, virtual worlds, and much more.

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.