Security and Privacy
ECE 574

Instructor: Prateek Mittal
Lecture Times: Tuesday and Thursday (11am - 12:20pm)
Office hours: By appointment only
Contact: pmittal AT princeton DOT edu


Overview

As our society transitions towards an information-driven paradigm, concerns about security and privacy of computing and communication have come to a forefront. This course exposes students to foundational principles and mechanisms that enable security and privacy in computing and communications. In addition, we study the interdisciplinary dimension of security and privacy by exploring its intersections with machine learning and computer networks.

The focus of this course is research oriented, with the following goals:
  • Develop understanding of core concepts, challenges, and opportunities in the field of security and privacy.
  • Learn to engage with security and privacy literature.
  • Gain experience conducting novel research in security and privacy via a project.
Here is a brief sampling of topics that we will discuss:
  • Overview of cryptographic primitives
  • Secure network architectures, public-key infrastructure
  • Privacy technologies, Anonymous communications
  • Traffic analysis, Censorship-resilient communications
  • Hot topics in security and privacy (this year's focus is on machine learning and security/privacy)
    • Privacy vulnerabilities of machine learning
    • Privacy-preserving machine learning, differential privacy
    • Security vulnerabilities of machine learning, evasion and poisoning attacks
    • Adversarial/Robust machine learning