CS 5430

System Security

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2026-2027 Catalog.

Surveys security for computers and communications networks, including policy issues (e.g., the national debates on cryptography policy) as well as technical approaches for implementing properties that comprise trustworthiness for a computing system: confidentiality, integrity, availability, and assurance. Discusses cryptographic protocols and other mechanisms for implementing authorization and authentication in hardware and in software.

Prerequisites background equivalent to: CS 4410.

Enrollment Information Enrollment limited to: Computer Science (CS) Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) students.

Last 4 Terms Offered 2026SP, 2025SP, 2023FA, 2022FA

Learning Outcomes

• Read and discuss existing cybersecurity literature.
• Formulate security policies required for application trustworthiness.
• Find vulnerabilities in shared key and public key cryptographic protocols.
• Develop defenses and formalize assurance arguments for cryptographic protocols.
• Define discretionary and mandatory access control policies.
• Implement authorization policies by using access control lists and by using capabilities.
• Enforce non-interference by using information-flow labels.
• Implement isolation for virtual machines, processes, and compartments.
• Design reference monitors and rewriters for enforcing specific policies.

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