This course is broadly focused on full-stack system security and will cover the foundations of building secure systems and cryptography. We will meet three times a week, with two lecture sessions and one session on discussion that will also feature guest talks from industry. During the course we will cover hardware, system software, and cryptographic primitives for building secure systems, both within the datacenter environment and in the decentralized setting. This course will focus on the cross-cutting security requirements of systems and how to bolster their security guarantees using a combination of systems and cryptographic techniques. The lectures will cover fundamental security concepts (e.g., threat models, trusted computing base), and do a deep dive into state-of-the-art attacks and defenses (e.g., speculative execution attacks). The course will span a set of hardware security topics including trusted execution environments, side-channels, hardware attacks (e.g., Meltdown, Spectre, Rowhammer), software systems such as blockchains, anonymous messaging, and secure machine learning.

Syllabus

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/course/15/793/www/syllabus.html

Class format

Lecture and project-based

Home department

Computer Science Department

Target audience

This course is appropriate for doctoral students in systems and/or security areas, as well as master's and undergraduate students that are interested in security topics and have a systems background.

Prerequisites

None. This course should be appropriate for graduate students in all areas and for advanced undergraduates.

Learning objectives

• Understand the state-of-the-art secure hardware architectures and software systems that power modern datacenters and the internet
• Have a solid grasp on modern cryptographic techniques, and understand how to leverage them for building practical systems with strong security guarantees and functionalities
• Identify the security implications of shared hardware resources and develop an understanding of existing attack vectors, defense mechanisms, and their limitations
• Develop and evaluate secure hardware and software systems with a focus on robust experimental methodology and cross-layer explanation of design decisions

Faculty and instructors who have taught this course in the past

Dimitrios Skarlatos, Wenting Zheng