| At the end of the course students
- can explain the common ways in which software security fails;
- are able to identify security objectives of applications and identify likely places where they might fail;
- can explain methods and technologies that can help in the development of secure software;
- can apply some of these techniques in practice.
Concrete examples of attacks and countermeasures are often specific to a certain setting (a programming language and/or type of application); the aim provide enough insight to be able to assess problems and proposed solutions in other situations. |
| Bad software is probably the most important cause of computer security problems. This course is about the challenges in developing secure software and the technologies that can be used to improve software security, at the various stages in the software development life-cycle, and at various "levels", eg. specific to an individual application or at the level of the programming language.
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 Lecture notes are available for part of the course. Selected articles on other topics treated in the course are made available via the course webpage.
Interesting background material to read are the books
• Building Secure Software, by John Viega and Gary McGraw. Addison-Wesley, 2002.
• Secure Coding: Principles & Practices, by Mark G. Graff and Kenneth R. van Wyk. O'Reilly, 2003.
• The 24 Deadly Sins of Software Security, by Michael Howard, David LeBlanc and John Viega, McGraw-Hill, 2009.
which all available in the library. |
• 32 hours lecture
• 40 hours group project work without guidance
• 6 hours individual project work without guidance
• 62 hours individual study period
Extra information teaching methods: Weekly lectures and project assignments.The project work consists of assignments in which students analyse more or less realistic pieces of code for potential security flaws using various techniques and tools. |
| This course is an obligatory course in the security master specialisation. As of 2015, it is 5 ec. Students who need 6 ec to complete their curriculum can obtain an extra ec by doing some project work in relation to this course of the specialisation they are taking. |
• Common security vulnerabilities, such as input validation problems (buffer overflows, SQL injections, etc.), race conditions, broken access control, XSS, CSRF, etc.
• Security measures in the software development life cycle: architecture, language/platform, implementation, testing, code review
• Language-based security: typing, (Java) sandboxing, untrusted code security
• Language-theoretic Security (LangSec)
• (Tool-supported) Static Analysis
• Examples of advanced type systems, e.g. for alias control or information flow
• Program Verification and Proof-Carrying Code (PCC)
• Security testing |
| Written exam and project work |
| Programming skills, in particular basic knowledge of C(++) and Java. |
| | Recommended materialsReader| Lecture notes are available for part of the course. |
| Articles| Selected articles on other topics treated in the course are made available via the course webpage |
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Instructional modesTestsTentamen| Test weight | | 1 |
| Opportunities | | Block KW2, Block KW4 |
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