Schedule

Jan 22: Introduction

Agenda:

• Why should we care about network security? 

• Common misconceptions of network security

• Examples of computer security issues and solutions

• Overall structure of the course

• Overview of labs and projects

Readings:

• Google’s Networking Class on Coursera. You can audit the class for free.

  • Watch all videos under “Week 1”, “Week 2”, “Week 3”, and “Week 4.

  • Optionally, watch all videos under “Week 5” and “Week 6”.

• https://www.csaw.io/

• https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/7/11173010/verizon-supercookie-fine-1-3-million-fcc 

• https://theintercept.com/2020/07/31/protests-surveillance-stingrays-dirtboxes-phone-tracking/ 

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack# 

• https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/17/justice/massachusetts-harvard-hoax/index.html 

• https://inspector.engineering.nyu.edu/ 

[Zoom recording (NYU only)]

Jan 29: Introduction to Cryptography (no livestream)

Agenda:

• Guest lecture by Vijay Prakash

• CIA triad

• Historical cryptography & Kerckhoffs's principle of cryptography

• Cryptographic setting

• Modern cryptographic algorithms

• Block cipher & Stream cipher

• Symmetric and Asymmetric algorithms

• DES

• Diffie-Hellman

• RSA

• Digital signature

• Hashes

• Birthday paradox

• MAC

Readings:

• https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/SEv2-c05.pdf

• Mining Your Ps and Qs: Detection of Widespread Weak Keys in Network Devices

• Fun comic: http://www.moserware.com/2009/09/stick-figure-guide-to-advanced.html

• The Code Book, by Simon Singh

• Class slides

Feb 5: How does the Internet work

Agenda:

• What happens when I visit "Google.com"?

• How to capture and analyze packets with Wireshark and Pandas

• Overview of protocols: IP, DHCP, ARP, DNS, TCP/UDP, HTTP, TLS

Readings:

• Google’s Networking Class on Coursera. You can audit the class for free.

  • Watch all videos under “Week 1”, “Week 2”, “Week 3”, and “Week 4.

  • Optionally, watch all videos under “Week 5” and “Week 6”.

• Read the following chapters of the Computer Networks Textbook (5th Edition) by Larry Peterson et al.

  • Chapter 2.6 - Ethernet

  • Chapter 3 - Inter-networking

  • Chapter 4 - Internet routing

  • Chapter 5.1 and 5.2 - UDP and TCP

  • Chapter 9.1.2 - HTTP

  • Chapter 9.3.1 - DNS

• Optionally, check out the following YouTube videos from Princeton’s Networking Class

  • Videos 26-32: IP

  • Videos 33-34: Routing, autonomous systems

  • Videos 85-89: DNS

  • Videos 146-151: HTTP

  • Videos 154-159: CDNs

[Zoom recording (NYU only)]

Feb 12: Local network security issues

Agenda:

• In-class quiz: Networking Basics (6:15 - 6:45 pm)

• Scanning with nmap

• ARP spoofing

• DHCP starvation

Readings:

• https://www.imperva.com/learn/application-security/arp-spoofing/ 

• https://iotinspector.org/papers/ubicomp-20.pdf 

[Zoom recording (NYU only)]

Feb 19: Access to the local network

Agenda:

• Lab 1 announced; see this google doc.

• ARP spoofing

  • Why does Bob flip back to the correct ARP table?

  • Does Bob know Alice is doing ARP spoofing?

  • Can Bob protect himself? DoH? VPN?

• DHCP starvation

• NAT

Readings:

• https://www.kali.org/tools/nmap/

• https://www.cbtnuggets.com/blog/technology/networking/what-is-a-dhcp-starvation-attack 

• https://tailscale.com/ 

[Zoom recording (NYU only)]

Feb 26: Beyond the local network

Agenda:

• DHCP Starvation vs ARP spoofing

• How VPN works. TailScale.

• Internet-exposed? NAT?

• Scanning with nmap. Shodan.

• BGP

Readings:

• https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/dns/what-is-dns/

• https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/security/glossary/what-is-bgp/ 

• https://zmap.io/paper.pdf 

• https://blog.cloudflare.com/october-2021-facebook-outage/ 

• https://tailscale.com/blog/how-nat-traversal-works/ 

• https://github.com/hwdsl2/setup-ipsec-vpn 

[zoom recording (NYU only)]

March 5: Local network vs the Internet

Agenda:

• Lab 1 due and review.

• NAT

• Nmap

• Port scanning

• Shodan

• Firewalls, IP Table

• IDS, IPS

• BGP

[Zoom recording (NYU only)]

Readings:

• How NAT works

• https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/security/glossary/what-is-bgp/ 

March 12: TLS & Public Key Infrastructure

Agenda:

• Quiz 2 in class (18:15-18:45). Quiz 2 will be based on Lab 1.

• Extra credit projects

[Zoom recording (NYU only)]

March 19: TLS + PKI + Authentication

Agenda:

• Lab 2 announced

• Firewalls, IP Table

• IDS, IPS

• BGP

• Recap on RSA and DH

• HTTPS: A primer on web security

• PKI

• Let's Encrypt, Certificate Transparency

• Man-in-the-middling TLS connection

Readings:

• https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/security/glossary/what-is-bgp/ 

• RSA and DH

  • RSA vs DH: https://blog.cloudflare.com/keyless-ssl-the-nitty-gritty-technical-details/ 

  • RSA Calculator: https://umaranis.com/rsa_calculator_demo.html 

  • DH Calculator: http://www.dkerr.com/cgi-bin/modexp.pl 

  • Power Mod: https://www.omnicalculator.com/math/power-modulo 

  • RSA: https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs5430/2015sp/notes/rsa_sign_vs_dec.php 

• Cloudflare blogs

  • https://developers.cloudflare.com/fundamentals/internet/protocols/tls

  • https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ssl/transport-layer-security-tls/

  • https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ssl/what-happens-in-a-tls-handshake/

• PKI

  • How LetsEncrypt works: https://letsencrypt.org/how-it-works/   

  • Introduction to PKI and TLS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuK-OAyfET4  

  • PKI: https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-to-build-your-own-public-key-infrastructure/ 

• HTTPS: A primer on web security

• PKI

• Let's Encrypt, Certificate Transparency

• Man-in-the-middling TLS connection

Readings:

• PKI

  • How LetsEncrypt works: https://letsencrypt.org/how-it-works/   

  • Introduction to PKI and TLS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuK-OAyfET4  

  • PKI: https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-to-build-your-own-public-key-infrastructure/ 

  • Certificate transparency: https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-certificate-transparency-and-nimbus/ 

[Recording (NYU only)]

March 26: No class

April 2 and 9: TLS + PKI + Authentication

Agenda:

• Lab 2 announced; see this Google Doc

• Firewalls, IP Table

• Recap on RSA and DH

• HTTPS: A primer on web security

• PKI

• Let's Encrypt, Certificate Transparency

• Man-in-the-middling TLS connection

• End-to-end encryption: How Signal works

Readings:

• https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/security/glossary/what-is-bgp/ 

• RSA and DH

  • RSA vs DH: https://blog.cloudflare.com/keyless-ssl-the-nitty-gritty-technical-details/ 

  • RSA Calculator: https://umaranis.com/rsa_calculator_demo.html 

  • DH Calculator: https://www.irongeek.com/diffie-hellman.php? 

  • Power Mod: https://www.omnicalculator.com/math/power-modulo 

  • RSA: https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs5430/2015sp/notes/rsa_sign_vs_dec.php 

• Cloudflare blogs

  • https://developers.cloudflare.com/fundamentals/internet/protocols/tls

  • https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ssl/transport-layer-security-tls/

  • https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ssl/what-happens-in-a-tls-handshake/

  • Randomness: https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ssl/lava-lamp-encryption/ 

• PKI

  • How LetsEncrypt works: https://letsencrypt.org/how-it-works/   

  • Introduction to PKI and TLS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuK-OAyfET4  

  • PKI: https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-to-build-your-own-public-key-infrastructure/ 

  • Certificate transparency: https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-certificate-transparency-and-nimbus/ 

• HTTPS: A primer on web security

• PKI

• Let's Encrypt, Certificate Transparency

• Man-in-the-middling TLS connection

• Heartbleed: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2663716.2663755 

• Randomness: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurity12/sec12-final228.pdf 

[Recording for April 2 (NYU only)] [Recording for April 9 (NYU only)]  [Code Demo]

April 16: Web security and privacy

Agenda:

• VPNs vs MITMproxy

• End-to-end encryption

• Signing

• Certificate transparency, wrapping up

• HTTP

• Cookies

• CSRF

• XSS

• Fingerprinting

Readings:

• https://victorzhou.com/blog/csrf/

• https://victorzhou.com/blog/xss/ 

• Entropy: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/primer-information-theory-and-privacy 

• https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ 

• https://fingerprint.com/demo/ 

• https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/03/privacy-smartphones-battery-life 

• https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2660267.2660347 

• https://hdanny.org/static/ccs-19.pdf 

• https://www.esat.kuleuven.be/cosic/publications/article-2556.pdf 

[Zoom recording (NYU only)]

April 23: Intimate Partner Abuse and ML for network security & privacy

No livestreaming; guest lectures. No recording even on BrightSpace. Contents will be covered in Quiz 3 or 4.

Lab 2 due

Agenda

• 18:00 - 18:15: Danny to answer questions on Lab 2. Note that Quiz 3 will be based on Lab 2, PKI, RSA, DH, public/private key cryptography, end-to-end encryption, VPN, etc, and this class.

• 18:20 - 19:20: Grace: Tech-enabled intimate partner abuse/surveillance

  • Examples: account abuse; IoT abuse [paper 1]

  • Why this is a difficult problem to solve

  • Current solutions (e.g., CETA)

  • Current non-solutions [paper 2]

  • Potential solutions: tools: AirTag detection [paper 3], hidden camera detection, etc [work in progress]

• 19:30 - 20:30: Rameen: Network security + ML

  • IoT device identification

    • Why it matters

    • Why it is difficult

    • IoT Inspector and its dataset

    • Method

  • Traffic fingerprinting 

    • Identify human activities

    • Identify app behaviors

    • Identify IoT behaviors

    • Broader applications beyond security & privacy: health

Required readings

• [Network security + ML]: IoT device identification

  • ProfilIoT: a machine learning approach for IoT device identification based on network traffic analysis

  • Classifying IoT Devices in Smart Environments Using Network Traffic Characteristics

  • An LLM-based Framework for Fingerprinting Internet-connected Devices

• [Network security + ML]: Traffic fingerprinting

  • BehavIoT: Measuring Smart Home IoT Behavior Using Network-Inferred Behavior Models

  • Keeping the Smart Home Private with Smart(er) IoT Traffic Shaping

  • Digital biomarkers: Convergence of digital health technologies and biomarkers

•  Tech-enabled intimate partner abuse/surveillance

  • Thermostats, Locks and Lights: Digital Tools of Domestic Abuse (log in through Google using NYU email for access)

  • Sneaky Spy Devices and Defective Detectors: The Ecosystem of Intimate Partner Surveillance with Covert Devices

  • 
    

April 30: Internet censorship

No livestreaming; guest lectures. No recording even on BrightSpace. Contents will be covered in Quiz 4.

Agenda

• Quiz 3 in class (18:10 - 18:40)

• 18:45 - 20:30: Internet censorship (Discussion led by Anonymous Expert, moderated by Danny. In person only.)

• Quiz 4 is announced; take-home exam, multiple choice only; open-book, open-Internet, open-collaboration; available May 1 - 11.

22:15 - 22:45 (April 30): I'll be hosting a Zoom session to discuss the quiz. If you have questions, feel free to join. The call will be recorded. Same Zoom link as the class.