Undergraduate Course: Computer Security (INFR10067)

Course Outline
School	School of Informatics	College	College of Science and Engineering
Credit level (Normal year taken)	SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate)	Availability	Available to all students
SCQF Credits	20	ECTS Credits	10
Summary	Computer Security is concerned with the protection of computer systems and their data from threats which may compromise integrity, availability, or confidentiality; the focus is on threats of a malicious nature rather than accidental. This course aims to give a broad understanding of computer security. Topics include security risks, attacks, prevention and defence methods; techniques for writing secure programs; an overview of the foundations for cryptography, security protocols and access control models. This course replaces INFR10058 Computer Security (10 credits).
Course description	* Introduction and background. Risks and attacks: to privacy (theft, surveillance); integrity (fraud); availability (vandalism, denial of service). Additional security properties: authentication, accountability. * Cryptography: basic functional foundations. Symmetric algorithms, for example: DES, Rijndael, RC4 * Public key cryptography. Algorithms including RSA, ElGamal. Hash functions, including SHA-1. Digital signatures and certificates. * Authentication: mechanisms and attacks. Protocols for authentication and key exchange, including Needham-Schroeder, Otway-Rees, Kerberos, Diffie-Hellman. * Formal approaches, including Burrows-Abadi-Needham logic for authentication and its application to security protocol analysis. * Malicious code and network defences: Trojan horses, viruses and worms, attacks on faulty code. Auditing, intrusion detection, alarms and honey pots. * Security engineering: security policy models, multi-level systems. Secure kernels and trusted computing bases. Anatomy of attacks, risk assessment, attack trees. * Present internet technologies, for example: PGP, SSL, SSH, SMIME, DNSSEC, IPsec, firewalls and VPNs. The Java Security Model and security programming in Java. * Copyright protection. Secure hardware and tamper resistance. Steganography and covert communication. Anonymity. * Security futures, real-world issues. Topics chosen from: web security, e-commerce and e-cash; legalities; export control, key escrow; information warfare and cyber terrorism; human factors. Recent research areas.

Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites		Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations	Students MUST NOT also be taking Computer Security (INFR10058)	Other requirements	This course is open to all Informatics students including those on joint degrees. For external students where this course is not listed in your DPT, please seek special permission from the course organiser (lecturer). For some parts of the course, good mathematical ability and basic understanding of logic (predicate calculus) are highly desirable. An ability to program in Java may be assumed for practical exercises.

Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisites	None
High Demand Course?	Yes

Course Delivery Information

Academic year 2017/18, Available to all students (SV1)		Quota: None
Course Start	Semester 1
Timetable	Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info)	Total Hours: 200 ( Lecture Hours 30, Seminar/Tutorial Hours 5, Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 4, Summative Assessment Hours 2, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 155 )
Assessment (Further Info)	Written Exam 75 %, Coursework 25 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment)	3 pieces of coursework - 1 formative assessment 2 assessments (25% of course total). 1 exam (75% of course total). If delivered in semester 1, this course will have an option for semester 1 only visiting undergraduate students, providing assessment prior to the end of the calendar year.
Feedback	Not entered
Exam Information
Exam Diet	Paper Name		Hours & Minutes
Main Exam Diet S2 (April/May)			2:00

Academic year 2017/18, Part-year visiting students only (VV1)		Quota: None
Course Start	Semester 1
Timetable	Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info)	Total Hours: 200 ( Lecture Hours 30, Seminar/Tutorial Hours 5, Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 4, Summative Assessment Hours 2, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 155 )
Assessment (Further Info)	Written Exam 75 %, Coursework 25 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment)	3 pieces of coursework - 1 formative assessment 2 assessments (25% of course total). 1 exam (75% of course total). If delivered in semester 1, this course will have an option for semester 1 only visiting undergraduate students, providing assessment prior to the end of the calendar year.
Feedback	Not entered
Exam Information
Exam Diet	Paper Name		Hours & Minutes
Main Exam Diet S1 (December)			2:00

Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to: Recognise the security threats against computer systems, and have at least a high-level idea of the ways to address them. Apply techniques and design principles underlying security solutions, including aspects of cryptography and security protocols. Be able to analyse simple security protocols using a formal method. Be able to use the World Wide Web to research the latest security alerts and information.

Reading List
* Ross Anderson, 'Security Engineering', 2nd Edition, John Wiley & Sons, 2008 * Dieter Gollman, 'Computer Security', John Wiley & Sons, 1999 * Nigel Smart, 'Cryptography: An Introduction', McGraw-Hill, 2003