Class Home

Text book

We will be using Computer Security: Art and Science by Matt Bishop.

Additional readings will be distributed during the semester. Electronic versions of these readings will be posted on compass. The books are on reserve at the Engineering Library under CS461.

Administrivia

Lecture: 11:00am-11:45am MWF in 1310 DCL.

Office hours: See staff page.

Class Overview

Information Assurance gives a broad introduction to the major topics in computer and communication security and information assurance. The objective of this course is to provide students with a basic understanding of the problems of information assurance and the solutions that exist to secure information on computers and networks.

This course satisfies the requirements of the NSTISSI-4011 training standard.

Class Evaluation

The bulk of the class grade will come from exams. There will be two exams during the semester that will account for 50% of the grade. The final will account for 25% of the grade. Homeworks will account for the remaining 25% of the grade. The low homework grade will be dropped.

Graduate students taking the class for 4 credits will be required to do an additional class project that will account for 20% of the grade. The other contributions to the final grade will be scaled accordingly.

Newsgroup, jabber, and other collaboration points

Class discussion will take place in newsgroup c.f.cs461.

The newsgroups have changed this semester. From this fall, using SSL with newsgroups is required. Also, the name of the news server has changed to news.cs.illinois.edu.

For further details about the news server see here and here.

Please note that in addition to accessing the newsgroup via mail clients such as Thunderbird and Outlook, you can use a web interface to access it: Web Interface for Newsgroups

This semester we will also use CITE's Jabber server and a cs461 Jabber chat room for discussions outside of class. Visit the Illinois Chat page to learn how to access the Jabber server. Note that XMPP is another name for the Jabber protocol. This page describes how to join chat rooms on Illinois Chat. The room name is cs461. The server is conference.illinois.edu. There is no password.

Related Courses

Look at the Security Course Roadmap for an understanding of the broader set of security courses and seminars offered at UIUC.

Academic Honesty

Copying or allowing someone to copy homework solutions, machine problems, and exam solutions, from other students in the class, or from other sources is considered plagiarism and is treated very seriously by the Department of Computer Science. The usual penalty for a first cheating offense is a grade of zero on the homework or exam. The penalty for a second offense, or a particularly severe first offense, is an F in the course. All cheating cases are reported to the department. Multiple offsenses can result in suspension or dismissal from CS program or from the university. Please refer to the University Policy on Academic Integrity and the CS Department's Honor Code