CS290G: Host-based Security and Malicious Code

Computer systems play a critical role in modern society. Unfortunately, they also fail occasionally, which results in lost time and productivity, financial losses, or even loss of lives. Often, failures are due to benign errors (or bugs) in the hardware or software that these systems use. However, in other cases, the failures are caused by deliberate actions of adversaries that aim to undermine the integrity, confidentiality, or availability of computer systems. Computer security studies mechanisms and techniques to protect computer systems from failures that result from malicious activities.

Computer security involves aspects from many different areas, such as networks, protocols, operating systems, applications, and programming languages. In this class, we look at the security of hosts. This includes the operating systems that these hosts are running as well as the applications. A particular focus will be put on unwanted applications (or malware programs) that have recently become one of the major threats to the security and privacy of Internet users.

• Final: Thursday, June 2
• No class on Tuesday, May 24.
• Midterm: Tuesday, May 3
• No class on Tuesday, April 26.
• No class on Tuesday, March 29.

Lectures:	Tue/Thu, 01:00PM - 03:00PM	PHELP 1401
Instructor:	Christopher Kruegel	chris (at) cs.ucsb.edu
Office hours:	Appointment by Mail	Harold Frank Hall 1117
Mailing lists:	Class	cs290g@lists.cs.ucsb.edu

The grading for this class will come from two exams (midterm and final) and eight practical assignments (called challenges).

The challenges (practical assignments) are individual projects. These projects are typically related to the material that is discussed during the lecture, and they require students to exploit vulnerabilities, solve forensics and reverse-engineering tasks, and write small programs.

Challenges	50%
Exams (Midterm and Final)	50%

Project assignments are due at 11:59:59PM on the night it is due. For details on how to submit your assignments, please refer to the project pages.

A note on cheating: We encourage you to talk with your classmates and discuss your approaches on projects, but any actual copying of code is cheating. Cheating will result in a 0 on the assignment, and depending on severity, can result in a failing grade or possible administrative action by UCSB.