Computer Security Seminar
Instructors
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Volker Roth
Description
This seminar builds on and extends the topics covered in the Computer
Security course that took place in the previous semester.
Students are not given one topic on which they have to prepare and present
a report near the end of the semester. Instead, all seminar participants
must read the papers assigned for each meeting and be prepared to discuss
them.
In a round-robin fashion, students must present one of the selected papers
plus related work. Related work must be identified by the student. The
presentations can be short, ranging from 10 minutes to 20 minutes, as long
as the subsequent discussion is well-prepared and fruitful. Two papers
will be presented per session provided there are enough participants.
Each presentation must address at least the following topics about the
presented paper:
- What is the research question addressed by the paper?
- Does the paper clearly review what is known about its topic area?
- Does the paper motivate a real problem worth solving?
- Does the paper include a rigorous and convincing validation?
- Does the validation show gains of practical significance?
- What is the significance of the paper's contribution?
- Is the evaluation valid?
- How original is the work?
- Is the paper written clearly and concisely?
- On which prior work does the paper build and how?
There is literature that teaches strategies how to read papers. Here is a
starting point:
The discussion will depend on the type of contribution. If the
contribution is, say, a security mechanism then we will ask questions such
as:
- Can we attack the mechanism?
- Can we improve the mechanism?
- If attacks are presented, can we defend against them?
- Is the mechanism useful in other areas and applications?
Additionally, each student must develop and present a research idea at the
end of the semester. It is not necessary to perform the actual research,
but the presentation must clearly state:
- What the addressed research question is
- What the state of the art is
- How the research expects to improve the state of the art
- How the research work would be evaluated
Time and Location
Lectures:
- Thursdays, 14h - 16h, T9/051
Note: the first meetings of the seminar is going to be in the second week
of the semester.
Grading
Students will be graded on their preparedness for discussion, their
presentations and their research proposal.
Meetings
No meeting on Thursday October 18, seminar starts next week
Meeting 1, Thursday October 25
During this meeting, an introduction to the seminar is given. The list of
papers will be posted in the second week of the semester.
Meeting 2, Thursday November 01
We discuss one book and one research question
- Sylvester P. Carter. Writing for your peers: the primary Journal paper. Praeger, 1987.
- How secure is Tor against traffic analysis?
Meeting 3, Thursday November 08
We discuss two papers on SSL insecurity due to faulty implementations
Meeting 4, Thursday November 15
We discuss two papers on decoy routing
Meeting 5, Thursday November 22
We discuss two papers
Meeting 6, Thursday November 29
We discuss two papers
Meeting 7, Thursday December 06
We discuss two papers
Meeting 8, Thursday December 13
We discuss two papers
No meeting on Thursday December 20, Academic holidays
No meeting on Thursday December 27, Academic holidays
No meeting on Thursday January 03, Academic holidays
Meeting 9, Thursday January 10
We discuss the process and challenges of choosing a research topic.
Meeting 10, Thursday January 17
We discuss two papers
- Maxwell Krohn, Alexander Yip, Micah Brodsky, Natan Cliffer, M. Frans Kaashoek, Eddie Kohler, and Robert Morris. 2007. Information flow control for standard OS abstractions. SIGOPS Oper. Syst. Rev. 41, 6 (October 2007), 321-334.
- Nickolai Zeldovich, Silas Boyd-Wickizer, Eddie Kohler, and David Mazières. 2011. Making information flow explicit in HiStar. Commun. ACM 54, 11 (November 2011), 93-101.
Meeting 11, Thursday January 24
We discuss two papers