COMP 435 (Fall 2026)

Monday / Wednesday / Friday 10:10-11:00am in Bingham 3014.

A working draft of the syllabus can be found here!

Office Hours

TA OH: in SN137

Wednesdays: 11-1pm, Thursdays: 3:30-4:30pm

Course Links

Assignments

Gradescope

In-Class Practice Solutions

Textbook #1: Computer Security and the Internet by Paul C. van Oorschot. PDF

Textbook #2: Introduction to Software Security by Barton Miller and Elisa Heymann. PDF

Week 1

Monday 8/17:

• FDOC!! :)
• Lecture 0: Welcome! Introduction, Security Mindset + Security Policies
• Slides
• In-class Practice
• Reading: Section 1.1

Wednesday 8/19:

• Lecture 1: Basic Principles, Intro to Threat Modeling
• Slides
• In-class Practice
• Reading: Section 1.2

Friday 8/21:

• Lecture 2: Attack Trees, Case Study: 2020 Twitter Hack
• Slides
• In-class Practice
• Reading: Section 1.2

Week 2

Monday 8/24:

• Lecture 3: Finish Threat Modeling, Risk Analysis
• Slides
• In-class Practice
• Reading: Section 1.3-1.5

Wednesday 8/26:

• Lecture 4: Finish Risk Analysis, Secure Design Principles
• Slides
• In-class Practice
• Reading: Section 1.7

Friday 8/28:

• Lecture 5: Intro to Trust
• Quiz 1
• Slides
• In-class Practice

Week 3

Monday 8/31:

• Lecture 6: More Trust, Intro to HW Security
• Slides
• In-class Practice

Wednesday 9/2:

• Lecture 7: Hardware Security Properties
• Slides
• In-class Practice

Friday 9/3:

• In Class Activity Day
• Slides
• In-class WS. Turn in at end of class

Week 4

Wednesday 9/9:

• Lecture 9: Hardware Bugs, Errata, CWEs
• Slides

Friday 9/11:

• Lab 1 Released
• Lecture 10: Information Flow Security, Intro to Side-Channels
• Slides
• In-class practice

Week 5

Monday 9/14:

• Lecture 11: Spectre
• Slides
• Part 1 of WA2 Passed Out. Turn in before Friday’s class. 9/17 at 11:59

Wednesday 9/16:

• Lecture 12: Rowhammer
• Slides
• Slides Pt. 2

Friday 9/18:

• In Class Activity Day
• Slides

Week 6

Wednesday 9/23:

• Lecture 14: Operating Systems Security
• Slides
• In-class practice
• Reading: Section 1.7

Friday 9/25:

• Quiz 2

Week 7

Monday 9/28:

• Lecture 16: Race Conditions, Access Control
• Slides
• In-class practice
• Reading: Section 5.2-5.7

Wednesday 9/30:

• Lecture 17: Acess Control Cont.
• Slides
• In-class practice
• Lab 2 Released

Friday 10/2:

• In Class Activity Day
• Lecture 18: Passwords, Password Guessing Attacks
• Slides
• In-Class WA3
• Code for WA3

Week 8

Monday 10/5:

• Lecture 19: Confused Deputy Attack, Capabilities
• Slides
• In-class practice
• Reading: Section 5.2-5.7

Wednesday 10/7:

• Lecture 20: Authentication, Biometrics
• Slides
• In-class practice
• Reading: Section 3.3-3.5

Friday 10/9:

• Quiz 3

Week 9

Monday 10/12:

• Lecture 21: Intro to Crypto!!
• Slides
• In-class practice
• Reading: Section 2.1

Wednesday 10/14:

• Lecture 22: Cryptanalysis, One Time Pad
• Slides
• In-class practice
• Reading: Section 2.2

Week 10

Monday 10/19:

• Lecture 23: Stream Ciphers & Block Ciphers
• Recording
• Slides
• Practice
• Reading: 2.2

Wednesday 10/21:

• Lecture 24: Public Key Crypto
• Slides
• In-class practice
• Reading: 2.3-2.6

Friday 10/23:

• In Class Activity Day
• In-Class WA4
• Presentations
• Lab 3 Released

Week 11

Monday 10/26:

• Lecture 25: Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange, Collision Resistant Hash Functions
• Slides
• Practice
• Reading: 2.3-2.6

Wednesday 10/27:

• Lecture 26: MACs, Digital Signatures
• Slides
• In-class practice
• Reading: 2.7, 4.1-4.3

Friday 10/30:

• Quiz 4

Week 12

Monday 11/2:

• Lecture 27: Guest Lecture from Saba Eskandarian on Multi-Party Computation

Wednesday 11/4:

• Lecture 28: Digital Dignatures, Start Software Security
• Slides
• In-class practice
• Reading: 6.2

Friday 11/6:

• Lecture 29: Buffer Overflow Attacks
• Slides
• In-class practice
• Reading: 6.3-6.8

Week 13

Monday 11/9:

• Lecture 30: Finish Software Security; Intro to Network Security
• Slides
• In-class practice

Wednesday 11/11:

• Lecture 31: Network Defenses
• Slides
• In-class practice

Friday 11/13:

• In-Class Written Assignment 5: Packet Sniffing and Spoofing
• WA5 Code
• Slides

Week 14

Monday 11/16:

• Lecture 32: Finish Network Security, Browser Security
• Slides
• In-class practice

Wednesday 11/18:

• Lecture 33: CSRF and XSS
• Slides
• In-class practice
• Lab 5 In-Class

Friday 11/20:

• Quiz 5

Week 15

Monday 11/23:

• Lecture 34: SQL Injection and Web Defenses, Malware
• Slides
• In-class practice

Wednesday 11/25 and Friday 11/27:

• Thanksgiving Recess — No Class

Week 16

Monday 11/30:

• Lecture 35: AI Security and Human Factors
• Slides
• In-class practice

Wednesday 12/2:

• Lecture 36: Privacy and Differential Privacy
• Slides
• In-class practice
• Last Day of Classes
• Final Project Due: Artifact, Report, and Video

Final Exam

Tuesday 12/8, 8:00–11:00 a.m.