ITX8045

Cyber Security Seminar (spring 2013)

Instructor: Rain Ottis, PhD

Contact: rain dot ottis at ttu dot ee

Schedule

Students are advised to check this wiki for changes in schedule, location, etc.

1. 18.02.2013 : 1600-1900 at IT-137A.

2. 25.02.2013 : 1730-2030 at IT-137A.

 Preparation: 
 a. Write a one page summary of your thesis research question, method and timeline until thesis defence.
   (e-mail it to the instructor NLT 1200 on 25.01.2013)
 b. Present the one-pager in class (slides optional).

3. 11.03.2013 : 1730-2030 at IT-137A.

 Preparation: 
 a. read this and this and be prepared to discuss the papers.
 b. If you have not presented your research question, you will get a chance.

4. 25.03.2013 : 1730-2030, location II-102.

 Guest lecture by dr Olaf Maennel - Attacks against BGP 

The lecture will cover attacks on the inter-domain routing protocol BGP. The Border Gateway Protocol, BGP, is the de-facto standard inter-domain routing protocol. However, when BGP has been designed it was built with an implicit trust assumption in mind and not secure at all. For more than 10 years now, researchers, vendors, operators, and even politicians have tried to find a workable solution to secure routing in the Internet. Recently, there has been some traction in the Secure Inter-Domain Routing (SIDR) Working Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). There is realistic hope that soon a Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI), origin validation and BGPsec will be deployed.

The lecture will go through the IETF standard proposals, that are soon intended to secure the Internet. Further, we will highlight current research that demonstrate that even if all those proposals would be in place, there are still a magnitude of attacks possible on the routing system. We will also discuss how to perform them.

Prerequisites: It is expected that the students have prior knowledge of routing in the Internet, in particular with the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and policy based routing.

5. 01.04.2013 : 1730-2030 at III-301. Be prepared to give an update on your thesis progress and to discuss the guest lecture.

6. 15.04.2013 : 1730-2030 at XIV-507C. Read this and be prepared to discuss. Building XIV is the new IT building at Akadeemia 15a.

7. 06.05.2013 : 1730-2030 at II-102. Guest lecture by Prof. Michael Schmitt on the Tallinn Manual.

• NB! Changed date for the last day!

8. 16.05.2013 : 1730-2030 at ICT-411 (IT building). Students perform a mock defence of their thesis, in order to get last minute feedback.

NB! Send a one page analysis of what you learned from the seminar by 22 May.

Content

During the seminar the students will research, write, present and discuss advanced topics in cyber security.

In addition, the seminar will be used to assist in developing a useful Master thesis topic. During April and May, students will present their thesis progress, in order to get feedback from peers and to improve the quality of the final thesis.

Admin notes

The course will be free of charge if you have a tuition free status (RE). You can ignore the warning in OIS that you have to pay for the course in this case.