COS/ELE 432: Information Security
Princeton University
Spring 2018


Course Information | Schedule

COURSE INFORMATION

Course description.  Security issues in computing, communications, and electronic commerce. Goals and vulnerabilities; legal and ethical issues; basic cryptology; private and authenticated communication; electronic commerce; software security; viruses and other malicious code; operating system protection; trusted systems design; network security; firewalls; policy, administration and procedures; auditing; physical security; disaster recovery; reliability; content protection; privacy.

Instructor.  Prof. Prateek Mittal.

Assistants in Instruction. 
Ben Burgess

Online forum.  If you have general questions about the assignments, lectures, textbook, or other course materials, please post via Piazza. Posts marked private are viewable only by instructors.

Collaborative lecture notes.  Students in past offerings of this course have put together some formatted lecture notes, which we're making available on github. You're welcome to use, update, and improve them. Please contribute your improvements back to your fellow students by submitting a pull request.

Textbook. There is no required or suggested textbook in this course, because there is no one book that covers the right material in an up-to-date fashion. Here are some good books about security, in case you're interested.

There are many good books about cryptography, but relatively few good ones about other computer security topics.

Lectures.  Lectures meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11am in Friend 004

Homework Policy. Homework will be due at the beginning of class. Late homework will lose 10% of its value for every day of lateness. Homework more than seven days late will not be accepted.

No homework extensions will be given except in extraordinary circumstances (such as documented illness), and then only if the official university procedures are followed.

Unless the assignment explicitly states otherwise, you may not collaborate with other students on the homework. (Of course, if it is a group assignment, you should collaborate within your group!) If you make use of outside sources, you should disclose that fact and cite the sources, as you would in any scholarly work.

Grading.  Grades will be computed by the following formula: 70% homework; 20% final exam; 10% subjective factors such as attendance and class participation.

Exams.  The final exam will be scheduled by the registrar. Details will appear here once available.