CS6903 (Network Security)
January – May 2021 · Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Hyderabad
Network security from first principles: security concepts, the cryptographic building blocks, public key infrastructure, TLS and HTTPS, Wi-Fi security, and network-layer topics including DNSSEC, IPsec, BGP security and firewalls. Six lectures are recorded; the rest are covered by the slides and reading material below.
Course details
- Course code: CS6903
- Semester: January 2021 (Spring)
- Level: postgraduate elective
- Credits: 3
Texts and reference material
- Anderson, Security Engineering
- Boneh and Shoup, A Graduate Course in Applied Cryptography
- ITU-T X.1205 · NIST Cybersecurity Framework · NCSC guidance
Evaluation
- Four assignments, mostly hands-on with OpenSSL and Wireshark
- Instant quizzes in class
Lecture plan
Six recorded lectures, followed by the topics covered in the rest of the semester. Where a guest lecturer provided the material, it is named but not republished here.
| # | Topic | Slides | Reading material | Video |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| L0 | Course structure | L0 course structure | — | not recorded |
| L1 | Network security concepts | L1 concepts | ITU-T X.1205 · NIST CSWP 04162018 · NCSC, 10 steps to cyber security · Measuring pay-per-install (USENIX Security 2011) | Watch |
| L2 | Basics of cryptography, part A | L2 principles I | Katz and Lindell · Boneh and Shoup · Anderson, Security Engineering | Watch |
| L3 | Basics of cryptography, part B | L2 principles | As above | Watch |
| L4 | Public key infrastructure, part A | L3 PKI | What the details of a digital certificate mean | Watch |
| L5 | Public key infrastructure, part B | L3 PKI revised | X.509 certificate chains, revocation and transparency | Watch |
| L6 | Transport Layer Security: TLS basics | L4 TLS 1 · L4 TLS III · L4 TLS all | A formal analysis of the TLS 1.3 handshake · OWASP TLS 1.3 overview · sample trace | Watch |
| L7 | TLS in practice: downgrade attacks and prefetch | — | Return of the version downgrade attack in the era of TLS 1.3 (CoNEXT 2020) · SSL prefetch analysis | not recorded |
| L8 | HTTPS | L5 HTTPS I · L5 HTTPS | Traces: bing · flipkart · sample capture | not recorded |
| L9 | DNS security and DNS over HTTPS | — | CENTR paper on DoH · DNSSEC deck by Antony Franklin (not redistributed here) | not recorded |
| L10 | Wi-Fi security: WPA2, WPA3 and known attacks | — | KRACK (CCS 2017) · Wi-Fi CERTIFIED WPA3 technology overview · SAE Dragonfly · Attacks on the 4-way handshake | not recorded |
| L11 | IPsec | — | IPsec basics deck by Antony Franklin (not redistributed here) | not recorded |
| L12 | BGP security and hijacking | — | BGP security and BGP hijack material by Praveen Tammana (not redistributed here) | not recorded |
| L13 | Denial of service and defences | — | DoS defence material by Praveen Tammana (not redistributed here) | not recorded |
| L14 | Firewalls, raw sockets and SDN-based security | — | Firewall, packet capture and SDN material by Kotaro Kataoka (not redistributed here) | not recorded |
Slide links open in Google Drive. Reading material without a link is third-party work — the title is given so you can find it at its publisher.
Assignments, tutorials and project
Handouts and submissions were managed in Google Classroom; titles are listed here for reference.
- Assignment 1: ABCs of digital certificates
- Assignment 2: Decrypting TLS and HTTP(S) messages using Wireshark
- Assignment 3: Secure chat using OpenSSL, and MITM attacks
- Assignment 4 (optional): Firewall using raw sockets
- Tutorials: OpenSSL, DNS with raw sockets
- Instant quizzes in class