| Title | Computer Security |
| Author | Dieter Gollmann |
| Publisher | John Wiley & Sons |
| ISBN | 0-471-97844-2 |
| Title | Practical Unix and Internet Security |
| Author | Simson Garfinkel and Gene Spafford |
| Publisher | O'Reilly |
| ISBN | 1-56592-148-8 |
Inspect the security
settings of the programs you typically use: (email, web browser, etc). Ask
yourself why you need each feature that is enabled and what threat it
poses.
Locate software that will enable you to sign/encrypt your email.
Download a password cracking program and evaluate the strength of the
passwords that you use.
From the textbook: 2.2, 2.3, 2.7, 3.3, 3.4, 3.7
There have been recent calls to backdoors to encryption products.
Estimate the practical viability of such an approach. Specifically
devise a feasible scheme of who would keep the keys and how they
would be used. Then estimate the (monetary) value of the keys and
determine what safeguards would be necessary to protect them.
Another recent event has been another worm, Nimba. Find an official
warning about the worm on the internet. Decide what vulnerabilities it
exploited and how similar attacks could be avoided in the future. What are
the obstacles?
From the book, Chapter 4: 4.1, a paragraph or two on 4.2, 4.3, 4.5, 4.10
As part of 4.10 consider scenarios for each of the models. What strengths
and weaknesses does each model have?
What are the purpose of models? What do they provide that you wouldn't
have by just coding them?
Questions from the book: 5.2, 5.3, 5.6, 5.7, and 5.9 with the addition
that you consider what (if any) security implications this has.
6.1, 6.2, and a couple of paragraphs on 6.8
How are the reference monitor, security kernel, and trusted computing base
related to each other?
Interrupts allow a processor to respond to actions in the outside world.
Another way of responding is to use polling. Consider the pros and cons
in general and with respect to security of interrupts versus polling.
Describe real user id versus effective user id. Is it worthwhile to
distinguish between the two? Come up with an example to illustrate
its usefulness.
A very careful system administrator may install new software while
operating under a chrooted environment. What are the pros and cons
of this approach.
How can you implement an ACL using setuid programs? What is the trade-off
between a setuid implementation and a kernel implementation?
From the book questions 7.3, 7.6, 8.3, 8.5, 8.6, 8.7, 9.3, 9.7. What are the trade-offs of evaluating the process versus evaluating the product. Is it better to emphasize prevention or monitoring? Explain. What is the least privilege principle? Give an example of how it would be violated. Describe an interrupt table virus. What are viruses, worms, and trojan horses? Find the source code for one of the above and review how it worked and propagated. What security hole did it exploit? Download a virus scanner and see if you find anything. Consider what you need to do to be sure that a virus can't interfere with the scan. Look at all of the processes currently running, do you know what each of them does?
From the book: 10.1, 10.4, 10.5, 10.7, 11.6, 11.7. What ideas is the Kerberos protocol based on? What are the strengths and weaknesses of these ideas? Find another security protocol for distributed systems and compare it to Kerberos. What are the pros and cons of cookies? Propose an alternative. Consider the trade-offs between conveinence and security in web browsing.
From the book 12.1, 12.2, 12.3, 12.10, 13.5, 13.7, 13.8, 14.3 and 14.5. How does a digital signature differ from an encrypted message? What are IPSec and SSL? What are the different types of network security protections available? What are the strengths of each? How are views useful for security?
From the book 17.5, and 17.6. Discuss what goes into an acceptable use policy. Describe the DES algorithm.