Welcome to EECS 350

Introduction to Computer
Security
 Why Computer Security
• The past decade has seen an explosion in the
concern for the security of information
– Malicious codes (viruses, worms, etc.) caused over $28
billion in economic losses in 2003, and will grow to
over $75 billion by 2007
• Jobs and salaries for technology professionals
have lessened in recent years. BUT …
• Security specialists markets are expanding !
– “ Full-time information security professionals will rise
almost 14% per year around the world, going past 2.1
million in 2008” (IDC report)
 Why Computer Security (cont’d)
• Internet attacks are increasing in frequency,
severity and sophistication
• Denial of service (DoS) attacks
– Cost $1.2 billion in 2000
– 1999 CSI/FBI survey 32% of respondents detected
DoS attacks directed to their systems
– Thousands of attacks per week in 2001
– Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, Microsoft, White House, etc.,
attacked
 Why Computer Security (cont’d)
• Virus and worms faster and powerful
– Melissa, Nimda, Code Red, Code Red II, Slammer …
– Cause over $28 billion in economic losses in 2003,
growing to over $75 billion in economic losses by 2007.
– Code Red (2001): 13 hours infected >360K machines -
$2.4 billion loss
– Slammer (2003): 10 minutes infected > 75K machines -
$1 billion loss
• Spams, phishing …
• New Internet security landscape emerging:
BOTNETS !
 Overview
• Course Administrative Trivia
• What is security: history and definition
• Security policy, mechanisms and services
• Security models
 Logistics
• Instructor
Yan Chen ([email protected]),
Office Hours: Thu. 5-6pm or by appointment,
L459, Tech Inst.
• TA
TBD
 Course Overview
• Satisfy the project course requirement for
undergrads
• Will become one of the depth areas for CS major
requirements
• Satisfy the breadth requirement for system
Ph.D. students
• Instructional course, different from EECS450
“Internet Security” seminar course
 Course Objective
• Understand the basic principles for information
and communication security, and be able to apply
these principles to evaluate and criticize
information system security properties
• Be able to use some important and popular
security tools, like encryption, digital
signatures, firewalls, intrusion detection
systems (IDS)
• Be able to identify the vulnerability of the
Internet systems and recognize the mechanisms
of the attacks, and apply them to design and
evaluate counter-measure tools
 Course Contents
• Cryptography
– Secret key algorithms: DES/AES
– Public key algorithms: RSA
– One-way hash functions & message digests: MD5, SHA2
• Authentication, access control, public key
infrastructure (PKI, briefly)
– Case study: Kerberos
• Internet vulnerability
– Denial-of-service attacks
– Viruses, worms, Trojan horses
 Course Contents (cont’d)
• Securing the Internet
– Intrusion detection systems (IDSs): host- vs. network-
based, signature vs. statistical detection
– Case study: Snort and Bro
– Firewalls, VPN and IPsec
• Software security
– Buffer overflow, heap overflow and string format bugs
– Detection techniques: static program analysis vs. run-
time detection
• Operating system security
– Dealing with bad (legacy) codes: sandboxing
– Multi-level security, file system security
 Prerequisites and Course Materials
• Required: EECS 213 or (ECE 205 and 231) or any
equivalent operating systems introductory
courses
• Highly Recommended: networking or having some
familiarity with Unix systems programming
• Required textbooks (see webpage for other
recommendations)
– Network Security - Private Communication in a Public
World
, by Charlie Kaufman, Radia Perlman and Mike Speciner,
2nd Edition, Prentice Hall, 2002
– Cryptography and Network Security, by William
Stallings, 4th Edition, Prentice Hall, 2006
 Grading
• Class participation 10%
• Homework 10%
• Project 40%
– Using of cryptography software (PGP) - 5%
– Intrusion detection systems/firewalls – 20%
– Buffer/string overflow exploit - 15%
• Midterm 20%
• Final 20%
– Exams in-class, closed-book, non-cumulative
• Late policy: 10% each day after the due date
• No cheating
 Communication
• Slides will be made online prior to each class
• Web page:
http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~ychen/classes
/cs350-w07/
• Newsgroup (cs.compsec) is available
• Send emails to instructor and TA for questions
inappropriate in newsgroup
 Projects
• Need to apply for T-Lab account if you don’t have
one currently
• We will hold a competition for statistical IDS of
project 2. The winner(s) will earn extra bonus
points plus some real gift awards
• Some familiarity with Unix systems programming
needed, preferably in C or C++
– Project 3 needs a little bit knowledge on X86 assembly
language, but should be easy to pick up
• Projects are individual
 Research on Computer Security
• Lab for Internet and Security Technology
(LIST)
• Http://list.cs.northwestern.edu
• Support students for Internet security
research
– Undergraduate Research Grant (URG) for the
summer
 Overview
• Course Administrative Trivia
• What is security: history and definition
• Security policy, mechanisms and services
• Security models
 The History of Computing
• For a long time, security was largely ignored in the
community
– The computer industry was in “survival mode”, struggling
to overcome technological and economic hurdles
– As a result, a lot of comers were cut and many
compromises made
– There was lots of theory, and even examples of systems
built with very good security, but were largely ignored
or unsuccessful
• E.g., ADA language vs. C (powerful and easy to use)
Computing Today is Very Different
• Computers today are far from “survival mode”
– Performance is abundant and the cost is very cheap
– As a result, computers now ubiquitous at every facet
of society
• Internet
– Computers are all connected and interdependent
– This codependency magnifies the effects of any
failures
 Biological Analogy
• Computing today is very homogeneous.
– A single architecture and a handful of OS dominates
• In biology, homogeneous populations are in danger
– A single disease or virus can wipe them out overnight
because they all share the same weakness
– The disease only needs a vector to travel among hosts
• Computers are like the animals, the Internet
provides the vector.
– It is like having only one kind of cow in the world, and
having them drink from one single pool of water!
The Spread of Sapphire/Slammer
Worms
 The Flash Worm
• Slammer worm infected 75,000 machines in <15
minutes
• A properly designed worm, flash worm, can take
less than 1 second to compromise 1 million
vulnerable machines in the Internet
– The Top Speed of Flash Worms. S. Staniford, D.
Moore, V. Paxson and N. Weaver, ACM WORM
Workshop 2004.
– Exploit many vectors such as P2P file sharing,
intelligent scanning, hitlists, etc.
 The Definition of Computer Security
• Security is a state of well-being of information
and infrastructures in which the possibility of
successful yet undetected theft, tampering,
and disruption of information and services is
kept low or tolerable
• Security rests on confidentiality, authenticity,
integrity, and availability
 The Basic Components
• Confidentiality is the concealment of information or
resources.
– E.g., only sender, intended receiver should “understand” message
contents

• Authenticity is the identification and assurance of the

origin of information.
• Integrity refers to the trustworthiness of data or
resources in terms of preventing improper and
unauthorized changes.
• Availability refers to the ability to use the information
or resource desired.
 Security Threats and Attacks
• A threat/vulnerability is a potential violation of
security.
– Flaws in design, implementation, and operation.
• An attack is any action that violates security.
– Active adversary
• An attack has an implicit concept of “intent”
– Router mis-configuration or server crash can also
cause loss of availability, but they are not attacks
 Friends and enemies: Alice, Bob, Trudy
• well-known in network security world
• Bob, Alice (lovers!) want to communicate “securely”
• Trudy (intruder) may intercept, delete, add messages

Alice Bob
data, control
channel
messages

data secure secure data

sender receiver

Trudy
Eavesdropping - Message Interception
(Attack on Confidentiality)
• Unauthorized access to information
• Packet sniffers and wiretappers
• Illicit copying of files and programs

A B

Eavesdropper
 Integrity Attack - Tampering
With Messages
• Stop the flow of the message
• Delay and optionally modify the message
• Release the message again

A B

Perpetrator
Authenticity Attack - Fabrication
• Unauthorized assumption of other’s identity
• Generate and distribute objects under this
identity

A B

Masquerader: from A
 Attack on Availability
• Destroy hardware (cutting fiber) or software
• Modify software in a subtle way (alias commands)
• Corrupt packets in transit

A B

• Blatant denial of service (DoS):

– Crashing the server
– Overwhelm the server (use up its resource)
 Classify Security Attacks as
• Passive attacks - eavesdropping on, or monitoring
of, transmissions to:
– obtain message contents, or
– monitor traffic flows
• Active attacks – modification of data stream to:
– masquerade of one entity as some other
– replay previous messages
– modify messages in transit
– denial of service
 Overview
• Course Administrative Trivia
• What is security: history and definition
• Security policy, mechanisms and services
• Security models
 Security Policy and Mechanism
• Policy: a statement of what is, and is not allowed.
• Mechanism: a procedure, tool, or method of
enforcing a policy.
• Security mechanisms implement functions that
help prevent, detect, and respond to recovery
from security attacks.
• Security functions are typically made available to
users as a set of security services through APIs
or integrated interfaces.
• Cryptography underlies many security
mechanisms.
 OSI Security Architecture
• ITU-T X.800 Security Architecture for OSI
• Defines a systematic way of defining and
providing security requirements
• For us it provides a useful, if abstract,
overview of concepts we will study
• X.800 defines security services in 5 major
categories
 Security Services (X.800)
• Authentication - assurance that the
communicating entity is the one claimed
• Access Control - prevention of the unauthorized
use of a resource
• Data Confidentiality –protection of data from
unauthorized disclosure
• Data Integrity - assurance that data received is
as sent by an authorized entity
• Non-Repudiation - protection against denial by
one of the parties in a communication
 Security Mechanisms (X.800)
• Specific security • Pervasive security
mechanisms: mechanisms:
– Encipherment
– Trusted
– Digital signatures functionality
– Access controls
– Security labels
– Data integrity
– Event detection
– Authentication
exchange – Security audit
– Traffic padding trails
– Routing control – Security recovery
– Notarization
 Overview
• Course Administrative Trivia
• What is security: history and definition
• Security policy, mechanisms and services
• Security models
Model for Network Security
 Model for Network Security
• Using this model requires us to:
– Design a suitable algorithm for the security
transformation
– Generate the secret information (keys) used by the
algorithm
– Develop methods to distribute and share the secret
information
– Specify a protocol enabling the principals to use the
transformation and secret information for a security
service
Model for Network Access Security
 Model for Network Access Security

• Using this model requires us to:

– Select appropriate gatekeeper functions to
identify users
– Implement security controls to ensure only
authorised users access designated information or
resources
• Trusted computer systems can be used to
implement this model
Backup Slides
 How to Make a System Trustworthy
• Specification
– A statement of desired functions
• Design
– A translation of specifications to a set of components
• Implementation
– Realization of a system that satisfies the design
• Assurance
– The process to insure that the above steps are carried
out correctly
– Inspections, proofs, testing, etc.
 The Security Life Cycle
• The iterations of
– Threats
– Policy
– Specification
– Design
– Implementation
– Operation and maintenance