CSCI 780 - Spring 2024
Distributed System Security

Syllabus

General Course Information

Instructor Stephen Herwig Office Hours:
WF 10:30am - 12:00pm, or by appt.
McGlothlin-Street Hall
Room #136
Time/Place MW 2:00pm - 3:20pm
Jones Hall
Room #113

Roadmap

Key:
Paper reading
Student presenter
Textbook reading
Sample code
Coding project
Intro Week 0
W 1/24
TLS and PKI Week 1 and 2
M 1/29
Ch 1. Setting Up Your Go Environment
Ch 2. Predeclared Types And Declarations
The Most Dangerous Code in the World: Validating SSL Certificates in Non-Browser Software

Deadline (@11:59pm): Email me a prioritized list of three papers you would be willing to present.

W 1/31 (Add/drop deadline)
p1: sget (Due: Fri 2/16 @11:59pm)
Ch 3. Composite Types
Ch 4. Blocks, Shadows, And Control Structures
CRLite: A Scalable System for Pushing All TLS Revocations to All Browsers
F 2/2

Deadline (@11:59pm): Email me your team and research topic (1-3 sentences). Only one member of the team needs to email me this information.

DNS Week 3
M 2/5
Ch 5. Functions
A Longitudinal, End-to-End View of the DNSSEC Ecosystem
Parsing Command-line Options
Simple TCP Client and Server
W 2/7
Ch 6. Pointers
TsuKing: Coordinating DNS Resolvers and Queries into Potent DoS Amplifiers
Simple TLS Client and Server
VPNs Week 4
M 2/12
Ch 7. Types, Methods, and Interfaces
WireGuard: Next Generation Kernel Network Tunnel
W 2/14
Ch 8. Generics
OpenVPN is Open to VPN Fingerprinting
F 2/16

Deadline (@11:59pm): Submit p1: sget.
Additionally, if you are interested in attending the DMV Workshop, you need to register by 2/18:

Tor Week 5
M 2/19
p2: sodoh (Due: Tue 3/12 @11:59pm)
Ch 9. Errors
Untraceable Electronic Mail, Return Addresses, and Digital Pseudonyms
The Dining Cryptographers Problem: Unconditional Sender and Recipient Untraceability
Tor: The Second-Generation Onion Router
W 2/21
How Do Tor Users Interact With Onion Services?
Messaging Layer Security 1 Week 6
M 2/26 (No Class)
Ch 10. Modules, Package, and Imports
W 2/28
Ch 11. Go Tooling
The Double Ratchet Algorithm
Reading a Key from a Certificate
HTTPS Visitor Counter
Messaging Layer Security 2 Week 7
M 3/4 (No Class)
Ch 12. Concurrency in Go
I encourage you to attend the DMV Security Workshop hosted at the University of Virginia.
W 3/6
p3: drat (Due: Fri 4/5 @11:59pm)
On Ends-to-Ends Encryption: Asynchronous Group Messaging with Strong Security Guarantees
Spring Break (No Class) Week 8
No class this week (M 3/11, W 3/13).
Email Week 9
M 3/18
End-to-End Measurements of Email Spoofing Attacks
W 3/20
A Longitudinal and Comprehensive Study of the DANE Ecosystem in Email
RPC and DSM Week 10
M 3/25 (Withdrawal deadline)
Ch 13. The Standard Library
Remote Procedure Call as a Managed System Service
W 3/27
Ownership: A Distributed Futures System for Fine-Grained Tasks
In Reference to RPC: It's Time to Add Distributed Memory
DTN / P2P Week 11
M 4/1
Ch 14. The Context
A Delay-Tolerant Network Architecture for Challenged Internets
W 4/3
Design and Evaluation of IPFS: A Storage Layer for the Decentralized Web
F 4/5

Deadline (@11:59pm): Submit p3: drat.

Authorization Week 12
M 4/8
Zanzibar: Google’s Consistent, Global Authorization System
W 4/10
Portunus: Re-imagining Access Control in Distributed Systems
Fault Tolerance Week 13
M 4/15
Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance
W 4/17
In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm
Trustworthy Computing Week 14
M 4/22
Ryoan: A Distributed Sandbox for Untrusted Computation on Secret Data
W 4/24
Nimble: Rollback Protection for Confidential Cloud Services
Ledgers Week 15
M 4/29
Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
W 5/1
Ethereum Whitepaper
Final Exam Week Week 16
M 5/6
We DO NOT have an exam in this class. However, if we did, our exam time would be Monday 5/6 from 2-5. In lieu of an exam, we will meet from 2:00-3:20 so that each team can present a brief presentation of their semester's research project.

Deadline (@11:59pm): A member of your team must email me your research project report.