Computer Systems Security

Security as a systems problem

This class is about designing and building secure computer systems from the ground up. Each topic is anchored in recent research papers, and the material moves between threat models, the attacks that exploit weaknesses and the techniques that defend against them.

Topics

• Operating system security and capabilities
• Information flow control and language security
• Network protocols and hardware security
• Security in web applications

Who it suits

Readers who want to work through primary research on system security will find the structure suited to them. It is a research-driven class rather than a survey of tools. Each lecture asks what an attacker could do against a design, which makes the course useful for anyone thinking about how systems fail.