Information Security and Computer Systems: An Integrated Approach Mark A. Holliday and Bill Kreahling, Dept of Mathematics and Computer Science Western Carolina University InfoSecCD 2006 Kennesaw, GA 23 September 2006

2 Acknowledgements Thank-you for financial support from  Software Producibility, Office of Naval Research, Award #N ,

23 September Overview  Motivations for Change  Guidelines: ACM, IEEE-CS, ABET-CAC  New Curriculum Framework  Initial Information Security Option  Final Information Security Option  InfoSec I and Internet Protocols  InfoSec II and Operating Systems  Conclusions

23 September Motivations for Change  Issue: How to create a prominent role for Information Security in – a B.S. in Computer Science curriculum – consistent with ACM/IEEE-CS/ABET-CAC guidelines – a small computer science program – a way that shows the close connection to computer systems  Result: One Design and Rationale

23 September Motivations for Change Why?  Information security is of increasing importance  Want to reinforce the computer systems courses and the information security courses by showing their interconnections – Goal is technical insight, not technical skill per se  Want to provide the students more choices – in a way that organizes those choices into coherent themes

23 September Motivations for Change  Additional constraints – Must be consistent with curriculum guidelines for a B.S. in Computer Science degree – Must be feasible for a small computer science program (70 majors; graduates per year)  We present one design and its rationale that meets these constraints

23 September Guidelines: ACM, IEEE-CS, ABET-CAC  2001 ACM/IEEE Computer Society Curriculum Guidelines for Computer Science – Encourages a small core combined with options – Body of Knowledge (BoK) – Subset of BoK that should be in any computer science curriculum

23 September Guidelines: ACM, IEEE-CS, ABET-CAC  ABET-CAC (Computing Accreditation Commission) Accreditation Criteria – “IV-6. The core materials must provide basic coverage of algorithms, data structures, software design, concepts of programming languages, and computer organization and architecture.”

23 September

10 New Curriculum Framework: The Options  How many courses and how many prerequisites?  Ideal – Many courses in an option to cover the area well – Student must have completed all of the courses in the core (with at least a grade of C)

23 September New Curriculum Framework: The Options  Reality – Degree needs to be 120 credit hours – 54 credit hours of Liberal Studies and General Electives – Student must be able to graduate in four years (assuming satisfactory progress) – 2+2: Transfer students with an A.S. degree should be able to graduate in two years

23 September New Curriculum Framework: The Options  Compromise – Major has 40 hours of CS courses and 31 hours of Mathematics and Sciences – CS Core is 25 hours – Options are 15 hours (5 courses of 3 credit hours) – Option courses have as prerequisites second programming course (our CS2, locally CS151) our intro to computer systems course (for most option courses)

23 September New Curriculum Framework: The Options  Three Options: – Computer Systems – Information Security – Custom  All options allow at least one free choice – Recall goal of more student choices => at most four required courses in an option

23 September Initial Information Security Option  Two key computer systems courses – Operating Systems and Internet Protocols  Pair each with an information security course that covers the corresponding security issues – Operating Systems => Computer Security – Internet Protocols => Internet Security  The two pairs are independent

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23 September Final Information Security Option  Independence does not work because so many topics build on cryptography and its security uses  Solution: – Order them with new names Information Security I and II  Internet Protocols co-req first – Since cryptographic applications are more naturally developed for internet security

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23 September InfoSec I and Internet Protocols Example Cross-Connections  InfoSec I: authentication and example attacks Internet Protocols: TCP connection establishment handshake – 3-way, random start sequence numbers, including random start sequence number for the other side

23 September InfoSec I and Internet Protocols Example Cross-Connections  InfoSec I: message integrity and non- repudiation =>Digital signatures and message digests => Hash functions Internet Protocols: hash functions for error detection – Checksums in UDP, TCP, and IP – Cyclic Redundancy Check in Ethernet

23 September InfoSec I and Internet Protocols Example Cross-Connections  InfoSec I: trusted intermediaries, key distribution, and certification Internet Protocols: development of IPC (Inter-Process Communication) – Sockets – Remote Procedure Call/Remote Method Invoc. – Web services – Grid computing (Globus, SimpleCA certificate authority)

23 September InfoSec I and Internet Protocols Example Cross-Connections  InfoSec I: firewalls and packet filtering rules Internet Protocols: IP routing tables and key packet header fields – IP addresses – UDP/TCP source and destination ports – ICMP message type – Other TCP header bits: SYN and ACK

23 September InfoSec II and Operating Systems Example Cross-Connections  InfoSec II: process address space vulnerabilities Operating Systems: segment protection (read-only versus read-write), stack overflow, memory management protection features (segmentation faults during address translation)

23 September InfoSec II and Operating Systems Example Cross-Connections  InfoSec II: program vulnerabilities, buffer overflows and software reverse engineering Operating Systems: assembly language, code analysis, automatic bounds checking

23 September InfoSec II and Operating Systems Example Cross-Connections  InfoSec II: system vulnerabilities Operating Systems: – trapping to the kernel (PSW and Interrupt Vector Table) and changing from user mode to kernel mode (not allowed machine instructions) – access control, file permission modes, setuid bit

23 September Conclusions  Issue: How to create a prominent role for Information Security in – a B.S. in Computer Science curriculum – consistent with ACM/IEEE-CS/ABET-CAC guidelines – a small computer science program – in a way that shows the close connection to computer systems  Result: One Design and Rationale