courses

CS 491/591: Introduction to Security

Location: FAB 47 (MW 13:00-15:20)

Instructor: D. Kevin McGrath


Final Project

Recordings

While not all lectures will be recorded, some will be. You will likely have to login to your PDX MediaSpace account to view these.

Course Description

This class provides an overview of computer security intended for a broad audience. Topics covered include basic security principles, access control, cryptography, authentication, network security, host security, application security, and privacy and anonymity with a focus on how they are embodied in actual systems.

Course objectives

  1. Explain the concepts of confidentiality, availability and integrity.
  2. Explain standard access control mechanisms (mandatory, discretionary, originator controlled) and how they can be used in conjunction with security models.
  3. Describe use of cryptographic algorithms in various secure protocols including digital signatures, hash functions, symmetric key, and public key cryptography.
  4. Explain various forms of authentication and identify social engineering attacks.
  5. Explain security issues in networks, hosts, and applications and how they can be addressed
  6. Identify privacy issues in computing systems and how they can be addressed

Policies

Grading Attendance and participation Academic Misconduct
Attendance      5%
Lab notebooks   65%
Final           30%		 Attendance is required and will be taken each class. If you miss class, extra credit will be given back for outside communication that indicates you are keeping up with the material. You are expected to follow this code of conduct when communicating. * Includes allowing another student to copy your work unless specifically allowed by the instructor.
* Results in a grade of 0 for the assignment or exam.
* Results in the initiation of disciplinary action at the university level.

Course Pages

Reference pages from across the course repo, organized by the schedule week where they are most relevant. General-purpose references that apply throughout the course are listed first.

General Reference

Page Description
Git Git fundamentals — branching, merging, rebasing, GitLab workflow
Technical Writing Markdown and LaTeX for lab notebooks
SSH: Secure Shell Key generation/use, ~/.ssh/config (patterns, %h/%n placeholders, Match, ProxyJump), forward/reverse/dynamic tunnels, authorized_keys forced commands, option precedence
SSH Tunnel for Windows RDP Applied example: Remote Desktop over a combined forward + reverse SSH tunnel
zsh: The Z Shell Shell theory and startup files, globbing/qualifiers, completion, history, prompt and plugins (oh-my-zsh/powerlevel10k), bash differences
tmux: The Terminal Multiplexer Client-server model, sessions/windows/panes, persistence over SSH, copy mode, ~/.tmux.conf, tpm/tmuxinator
Kali Configuration Course Kali linux environment (can also be used on macOS)
PowerShell Profile PowerShell environment configuration

Weeks 1–2: Linux Basics and Access Control

Page Description
Security Principles and Approaches CIA triad and extensions, AAA, attacker mindset, attack surface and trust boundaries, risk management, defense in depth and the recurring design principles
Roles and Careers in Cybersecurity Red/blue/purple/yellow teams, NICE Framework, defensive/offensive/builder/GRC/specialized roles, mapping to PSU courses, certifications and getting started
Access Control and Authorization Reference monitor, access control matrix, ACLs vs capabilities, DAC/MAC/RBAC/ABAC/ORCON, Bell–LaPadula/Biba, least privilege, Linux worked examples
Navigation Basics Filesystem layout, ls, cd, pwd, mv, cp, mkdir, rm, and the FHS hierarchy
Editing Files Vim, Nano, and Emacs fundamentals
Shell and Other Basics PATH resolution, environment variables, I/O redirection, man, sudo
Working with Files Permissions, chmod, chown, archiving, rsync, hard links and symlinks
Process Management Background/foreground jobs, ps, signals, kill, nice
Unix Text Processing: grep, sed, and awk Stream editing, in-place replacement, validation, and pipeline patterns
Software Configuration Environment setup for the course VM
User Management Creating users and groups, chmod/chown, ACLs, sudo configuration, setuid

Week 3: Cryptography

Page Description
A History of Cryptography From Caesar and al-Kindī’s frequency analysis through Vigenère, Enigma, Shannon’s perfect secrecy, DES/AES, and the public-key revolution — with a 20th-century timeline of how long each cipher stayed ahead of brute force
Cryptography Symmetric, asymmetric, hashing, HMAC, digital signatures, key exchange, certificates, TLS, PKI, forward secrecy, certificate transparency, key management

Week 4: Authentication, Social Engineering, and Wireless Security

Page Description
Identity and Access Management Password security, MFA, TOTP, OAuth 2.0, OIDC, RBAC, FIDO2/passkeys, zero-trust, continuous authentication, workload identity
Social Engineering Cialdini’s persuasion principles, phishing/spear/whaling, vishing/smishing/quishing, pretexting, baiting, BEC, dissecting phishing email headers (SPF/DKIM/DMARC), phishing-resistant defenses
Cracking WiFi 802.11 capture, WPA2 handshake cracking with aircrack-ng
Hash Cracking with Hashcat and John Offline cracking, hash identification, wordlists, mangling rules, mask/hybrid/combinator attacks, PRINCE and the Purple Rain expansion, John’s *2john converters and unshadow

Weeks 5–6: Network Security

Page Description
Introduction to Networking TCP/IP stack, subnetting, ARP, DHCP, routing, DNS, HTTP, TLS, email protocols
Network Security Segmentation, nftables, VLANs, WAF, DNSSEC, DDoS mitigation
VPNs and IPSec Remote-access vs site-to-site, full vs split tunnel, IPSec (AH/ESP, transport/tunnel mode, IKEv2/PFS), OpenVPN, WireGuard, TunnelVision and DNS-leak limitations
DNS Security and Privacy Cache poisoning, DNSSEC (integrity), encrypted transports DoT/DoH/DoQ (confidentiality), Oblivious DoH, kdig worked examples
Email Security SMTP/IMAP/POP and TLS ports, STARTTLS vs implicit TLS, MTA-STS/DANE, SPF/DKIM/DMARC and alignment, ARC/BIMI, S/MIME and PGP, auditing a domain with dig
Defensive Measures Firewalls, packet filtering, IDS/IPS overview
Network Traffic Capture Capture points, strategies, span ports, physical taps
Capturing Packets with tcpdump tcpdump filters, ring-buffer capture, reading pcap files
Wireshark Display filters, stream following, statistics, TLS decryption
tshark tshark field extraction, display filters, scripting
Pcap Analysis and Manipulation Tools tcpflow, ngrep, tcpreplay, Zeek, argus, editcap
Network Flow Analysis: NetFlow, Zeek, and Argus NetFlow/IPFIX, nfdump, Zeek log analysis and scripting, Argus flow capture
Scapy Packet crafting, ARP spoofing, custom protocol building
Windows Packet Capture pktmon, Wireshark, tshark, netsh trace on Windows
Introduction to Recon Network reconnaissance and nmap
IPv6 RH0 Attack Ripple20 routing header vulnerability — worked network attack example

Weeks 6–7: Host Security, Threat Modeling, and Application Security

Page Description
MITRE ATT&CK Framework Attack tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) reference
Host Security and the Attack Lifecycle Initial access, privilege escalation, persistence, lateral movement, exfiltration; SUID/sudo/cron enumeration; host defenses — HIDS/EDR, signatures vs anomaly, allowlisting, code signing, auditd, backups
Threat Modeling STRIDE, PASTA, attack trees, Data Flow Diagrams, pytm
Vulnerability Management Scanning, CVEs, CVSS scoring, patch management
Suricata IDS/IPS Installation, IDS and IPS modes, rule writing, Lua detection, EVE log analysis
SIEM and SOC SIEM concepts, Elastic Security, Wazuh, Falco, auditd, SOAR
Incident Response NIST IR lifecycle, volatile evidence, digital forensics, root cause analysis
Application Security OWASP Top 10, SQL injection, XSS, SAST/DAST, SCA, secrets detection
DevSecOps Fundamentals Shift-left security, CIA triad, zero-trust, defense in depth, minimal CI/CD pipeline
Containerization cgroups, namespaces, OCI runtimes, Docker, container security

Week 8: Memory Corruption, Supply Chain, and Privacy

Page Description
Memory Corruption and Exploit Mitigations Stack buffer overflows, ROP, stack canaries, NX/DEP, ASLR/PIE, CFI and shadow stacks, checksec, memory-safe languages
Software Supply-Chain Security Dependency confusion, typosquatting, SolarWinds and XZ Utils (CVE-2024-3094), SBOMs (SPDX/CycloneDX), Sigstore/cosign, SLSA, syft/grype worked example
Network-Based Fuzzing boofuzz, protocol fuzzing, crash analysis with pwndbg
Privacy Law: Beyond the Fourth Amendment Privacy law, cyber-crimes, anonymity, legal frameworks

Schedule (SUBJECT TO CHANGE – CHECK REGULARLY)

Week Topic Labs Due
1 Introduction
Careers and Roles in Cybersecurity (CyberPDX)
Principles and Approaches
Access Control and Authorization
Linux Basics (files, commands, command I/O, shell navigation)		 Lab #1  
2 Linux basics (advanced files, regex, file utilities, network commands, processes)
Linux Access Control (permissions, setuid, sudo)		   Lab #1
3 Applied cryptography: Encoding, Hash functions, Message Authentication Codes
Applied Cryptography: Symmetric, Asymmetric (Public-Key) encryption
Applied Cryptography: Digital signatures, Certificates		 Lab #2  
4 Applied Cryptography: Key exchange protocols, Perfect Forward Secrecy, Future Secrecy, Signal protocol
Authentication: Password security, Multi-factor authentication, FIDO/Passkeys (Passwordless authentication), Zero-trust and continuous authentication
Social engineering (Spam, Phishing, Business Email Compromise, Scams, Fraud)		 Lab #3 Lab #2
5 Network security: Data-link layer (802.11, WPA2, ARP)
Network layer (IP, CIDR, Sniffing, Spoofing, Hijacking)
Network layer (DDoS, IPSec/VPNs, firewalls and filtering, network segmentation, network intelligence, ICMP)		 Lab #4  
6 Network Security: Transport layer (TCP, TLS, certificate authorities and transparency, certificate revocation)
Application layer: DNS security (DNS, DNSSEC, DoH, DoT, Oblivious DNS), E-mail security (SMTP/IMAP/POP over TLS, DKIM, SPF, DMARC)
Host Security: Host attacks (Initial access, Privilege escalation, Internal recon)		   Lab #3
7 Host attacks (Lateral movement, Persistence, Impact)
Host defenses (IDS/IPS/EDR, signature detection, anomaly detection, blocklisting and allowlisting, Software signing, Virtualization and isolation techniques, File system backup and encryption)
Application security: DevSecOps		 Lab 5 Lab #4
8 Programming language and CPU security, Memory corruption, Return-oriented Programming, Canaries, ASLR, Control-Flow Integrity
Supply-chain security
Privacy and anonymity security		   Final Project
       

We will not be meeting the week of finals, and I will not be holding office hours. I will be available via email, but may not reply immediately, or even the same day.

Assignments

Labs and notebook

Lab assignments will be given each class covering the course material. You will perform each one, while maintaining a lab notebook in markdown that documents your progress via screenshots with your OdinID in them. The notebook should also include answers to any questions in the labs. Notebooks should be done in Markdown in their respective folders. Submission will be done via adding, committing and pushing the files to your private CECS GitLab repository.

Please add myself (dmcgrath) as a collaborator to your private repo. You can do this by going to the settings page for your repo, clicking on the “Manage access” tab, and then clicking on the “Invite a collaborator” button. You will need to add both myself and your TA as collaborators.

Always turn in what you have done on-time. Late work throughout the quarter may be compiled into a single submission that will be graded at the end of the last week of class in a file named notebooks/LateLabs.pdf. The notebook will be graded based upon the following rubric:

Academic or Student Support Services

Accommodations

Accommodations for students with disabilities are determined and approved by Disability Resource Center (DRC). If you, as a student, believe you are eligible for accommodations but have not obtained approval please contact DRC immediately at 503-725-4150, drc@pdx.edu, or https://www.pdx.edu/disability-resource-center. DRC notifies students and faculty members of approved academic accommodations and coordinates implementation of those accommodations. If you have accommodations through DRC and wish to take the Midterm or Final Exam in the testing center, I strongly recommend that you schedule it before the end of week 1. If you are not registered with the DRC, you cannot register to take an exam in the testing center.

I want to make this class an open and welcoming environment for all. Your success is my goal.

Religious Observance

Portland State University strives to respect all religious practices. If you have religious holidays that conflict with any of the requirements of this class, please see me immediately so that we can make alternative arrangements.

Reach Out for Success

The PSU Center for Student Health and Counseling (SHAC) is staffed with folks who care and can help with a wide range of personal challenges. Here at PSU, there is never a need to tough things out alone.

As a student you may experience a range of issues that can cause barriers to learning, such as strained relationships, increased anxiety, alcohol/drug problems, feeling down, difficulty concentrating and/or lack of motivation. These mental health concerns or stressful events may lead to diminished academic performance or reduce a student’s ability to participate in daily activities. PSU is committed to advancing the mental health and well-being of its students. If you or someone you know is feeling overwhelmed, depressed, and/or in need of support, services are available. You can learn more about the broad range of confidential mental health services available on campus via SHAC https://www.pdx.edu/health-counseling/.

SHAC also has resources for physical health, including flu shots. You can check out their COVID-19 resources page here: https://www.pdx.edu/health-counseling/covid-19-resources (including testing).

Get Food Now Here at PSU, there is never a need to tough things out alone. Those who can, give, so those who need, have.

Housing / financial crisis help. Here at PSU, there is never a need to tough things out alone. Emergency Housing, etc.

Title IX

As an instructor, students frequently come to me for assistance in matters that are not related to the course material. Please be aware that PSU’s policies require instructors to report any instance of sexual harassment, sexual and relationship violence and/or other forms of prohibited discrimination to University Officials, who keep the information private. If you would rather share information about these experiences with a PSU staff member who does not have these reporting responsibilities and can keep the information confidential, please contact one of the following campus resources.

PSU Sexual Misconduct Response website gives you comprehensive information about how to support and/or report an incident.

Please complete the required student module Understanding Sexual Misconduct and Resources in Canvas, which provides information about PSU policy and resources.

You may also report sexual and relationship violence to law enforcement on campus with Campus Public Safety Office (CPSO).

Or you may file an anonymous report with Campus Public Safety Office or a Bias Incident report with the Bias Review Team (BRT). PSU does not typically investigate the reports that are made through these two avenues. These reports help PSU understand what students and employees are experiencing on and around campus and provide support where needed.

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