CSCI 780 - Spring 2025
Distributed System Security

Syllabus

General Course Information

Instructor Stephen Herwig Office Hours:
T 11:00 - 12:00
Th 11:00 - 12:00
F 1:00 - 2:00
McGlothlin-Street Hall
Room #136
Time/Place TTh 9:30am - 10:50am
McGlothlin-Street Hall
Room #002

Roadmap

Key:
Paper reading
Student presenter
Textbook reading
Sample code
Coding project
Intro Week 0
Th 1/23

No Class - (Delayed opening, and travel)

TLS and PKI Week 1
T 1/28
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
Th 1/30
Ch 3. Composite Types
Ch 4. Blocks, Shadows, And Control Structures
CRLite: A Scalable System for Pushing All TLS Revocations to All Browsers
F 1/31

Add/drop deadline

DNS Week 2
T 2/4
p1: sget (Due: Fri 2/21 @11:59pm)
Ch 5. Functions
A Longitudinal, End-to-End View of the DNSSEC Ecosystem
Parsing Command-line Options
Simple TCP Client and Server
Th 2/6
Ch 6. Pointers
TsuKing: Coordinating DNS Resolvers and Queries into Potent DoS Amplifiers
Simple TLS Client and Server
VPNs Week 3
T 2/11
Ch 7. Types, Methods, and Interfaces
WireGuard: Next Generation Kernel Network Tunnel
Th 2/13
OpenVPN is Open to VPN Fingerprinting
Tor Week 4
T 2/18
Ch 8. Generics
Untraceable Electronic Mail, Return Addresses, and Digital Pseudonyms
The Dining Cryptographers Problem: Unconditional Sender and Recipient Untraceability
Tor: The Second-Generation Onion Router
Th 2/20
How Do Tor Users Interact With Onion Services?
F 2/21

Deadline: 11:59pm: p1: sget

Messaging Layer Security Week 5
T 2/25
Ch 9. Errors
The Double Ratchet Algorithm
Th 2/27
On Ends-to-Ends Encryption: Asynchronous Group Messaging with Strong Security Guarantees
F 2/28

Deadline: 11:59pm: Send me a short email about your project and teammates

Email Week 6
T 3/4
p2: sodoh (Due: Tue 3/28 @11:59pm)
Simple HTTPS Server
Configurable HTTPS Server
Ch 10. Modules, Package, and Imports
End-to-End Measurements of Email Spoofing Attacks
Th 3/6
A Longitudinal and Comprehensive Study of the DANE Ecosystem in Email
Spring Break (No Class) Week 7
No class this week (T 3/11, Th 3/13).
P2P Week 8
T 3/18
HTTP/S Clients
Ch 11. Go Tooling
A Delay-Tolerant Network Architecture for Challenged Internets
Th 3/20
Parsing a Certificate File
Design and Evaluation of IPFS: A Storage Layer for the Decentralized Web
Cloud Week 9
M 3/24

Withdrawal deadline

T 3/25
Ch 12. Concurrency in Go
Take Over the Whole Cluster: Attacking Kubernetes via Excessive Permissions of Third-party Applications
Th 3/27
Guarding Serverless Applications with Kalium
F 3/28

Deadline: 11:59pm: p2: sodoh

I encourage you to attend the DMV Security Workshop hosted at Virginia Tech.
Fault Tolerance Week 10
T 4/1
p3: drat (Due: Tue 5/6 @11:59pm)
Ch 13. The Standard Library
Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance
Th 4/3
In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm
No Class Week 11
Ch 13. The Standard Library

No class this week (4/8, 4/10) (travel)

Applied Cryptography Week 12
T 4/15
Improved Proxy Re-Encryption Schemes with Applications to Secure Distributed Storage
Th 4/17
PrivateDrop: Practical Privacy-Preserving Authentication for Apple AirDrop
Trustworthy Computing Week 13
T 4/22
Ryoan: A Distributed Sandbox for Untrusted Computation on Secret Data
Th 4/24
Nimble: Rollback Protection for Confidential Cloud Services
Ledgers Week 14
T 4/29
Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
Th 5/1
Ethereum Whitepaper
Final Exam Week Week 15
T 5/6
We DO NOT have an exam in this class. However, if we did, our exam time would be Tuesday 5/6 from 9-12am. In lieu of an exam, we will meet from at our normal time on Tuesday 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.