CSC424/ECE534-F: Communication and Security

News and Announcements for CSC424 Communication, Distribution and Security.

Wed 6 May:

Project 4 due.

Fri 1 May:

Project 3 third call

Fri 24 Apr:

Project 3 second call

Fri 3 Apr:

Packet Passaround Bake-off, round two.

Mon 30 Mar:

Project 3 due.

Mon 23 Mar and onwards:

Class meetings moved on line using <Zoom>

Mon 16 Mar:

Project 3 due.

Fri 28 Feb:

Packet Passaround Bake-off

Fri 21 Feb:

Project 2 due.

Wed 5 Feb:

Project 1 due.

Friday 31 Jan:

Quiz 3 due.

Monday 27 Jan:

Quiz 1 and 2 due.

Wed 22 Jan:

Emailed svn invites (4 more sent)

Sunday 19 Jan:

Emailed svn invites (8 of ? sent)

Sunday 19 Jan:

Updated grading policy.

Monday 20 Jan:

No class for MLK day

Monday 13 Jan:

Semester begins. Welcome!

Syllabus for CSC424 Communication, Distribution and Security.

This is a course in:

• The standard communication protocols of computers, including TCP/IP,
• and the security concerns consequent to those protocols;
• The craft of highly skilled coding in C, following specifications,
• and understanding and countering sophisticated attacks against system security.

• Readings:
  • Computer Networks, Fifth Edition: A Systems Approach
    (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Networking) 5th Edition,
    Other editions might be acceptable.
    by Larry L. Peterson (Author), Bruce S. Davie (Author).
    ((Amazon))
  • Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems,
    2nd Edition,
    by Ross J. Anderson.
    ((Amazon))
• Resources you will need:
  • Please subscribe to the Slack channel, csc-courses.slack.com
  • The class Twitter is http://twitter.com/csc524. Please follow it.
  • TA one is: Zishi Wu zishi@cs.miami.edu
  • TA two is: Kevin Padron kxp475@miami.edu
  • My Office hours: MWF by appointment.
• Work:
  • Quizzes: From time to time, to emphasize a concept. Will be due in a short time frame, and no lateness is allowed.
  • Projects: A series projects, usually 2 to 3 weeks in length. A grace period of lateness is allowed. See below.
  • Project grading: Projects are generally scored on a 0 to 5 scale, sometimes 6, with 5 or 6 being reserved for excellent projects.
  • Grade depends on completeness, correctness, and presentation.
  • Use of Subversion, Makefiles and file and folder names as requested are a must.
  • Lateness: Three days grace automatic on projects. One additional point off each week late, up to four points. No lateness for quizzes.
  • No work accepted for grade after midnight, the last day of classes.
  • Class grading: After normalizations, 70% projects, 30% quizzes.
• Computers:
  • You will need to enroll in AWS to use their Elastic Computing. That is: machines in the cloud that you rent by the hour and completely control. You might qualify for a free tier. If not the cost of the semester's computer use will be under $100.
  • We will make extensive use of subversion, a source code control system, to distribute your work across machines, and to submit assignments.
  • To contact the AWS instance, you need a standard ssh. MacOS ships with ssh (it also ships with subversion, if you want to bring your code to your local machine).
  • Windows users need cygwin for ssh, or I've been told WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) has an ssh, and you install WSL through the usual windows channel.

Packet communications and the Internet

• Introduction
  • Tools of the trade and network etiquette.
  • The OSI ISO model (image)
  • Discussion: Why layers? Why not layers?
  • Peer-to-peer responsibilities vs. SAP (service access points)
  • Encapsulation, headers and payload, demultiplexing (unpacking) (image)
  • Implementation and standards, for the Internet/WAN (image) and for the LAN (image)
• Basic concepts
  • Packet versus connection.
  • Broadcast versus routed.
  • Common and point-to-point mediums.
  • LAN versus WAN, and an internet.
• Sockets
  • File I/O
  • Socket operations
  • BSD Socket interface: Beej's Guide to Network Programming
  • Using sockets: the Netbounce example
• Enough networking to be dangerous
  • command line tools:
    ping
    • traceroute
    • ifconfig
    • tcpdump
  • Header formats
    • A typical L2 frame is the 802.3 ethernet
    • L3 packet contains an IP packet with an IP header
    • The IP packet can contain an UDP message (non-standard terminology) that starts with an UDP header
    • ICMP
  • Wireshark snaps:
    • DNS Query, Layer 2 unfolded and highlighted
    • DNS Query, Layer 3 highlighted
    • DNS Query, Layer 4 unfolded and highlighted
    • DNS Query, DNS protocol payload highlighted
    • ICMP Query (ping), Layer 3 unfolded and highlighted
    • ICMP Query (ping), ICMP payload unfolded and highlighted
• The wizard behind the curtain
  • Undersea cables map
  • FL Lambda Rail
  • Bundled, Buried and Behind Closed Doors.
  • AT&T Achives: The step by step switch

Adresses and Names

• What's in a name
  • The MAC address is "just a name", and it pretty useless "far away" from the destination.
  • Names, such as www.miami.edu, are non-entities in TCP-UDP/IP. Only numbers count.
  • The role of DNS to turn names into numbers, before the networking game starts.
• L2: MAC address
  • Broadcast address, broadcast domain
  • Except LSB is 0 for unicast, 1 for multicast or broadcast
  • And except that second LSB is U/L bit. 0 for Universally administered, 1 for Locally administered.
  • Universally administed with a 24 leading-bit OUI
• L3: IP
  • The IP address gives the network name for the endpoint, and contains routing information in the prefix.
  • IP space map.
  • Classfull addressing
    • A, CIDR-speak /8 (pronounced: slash 8).
    • B, CIDR-speak /16 (pronounced: slash 16).
    • C, CIDR-speak /24 (pronounced: slash 24).
    • D, multicast, /28 sort of? with network part 0xE
    • E, reserved, /28 sort of? with network part 0xF
  • Netmasks and subnetting
  • CIDR introduce in RFC 1518 and RFC 1519 in September 1993.
  • Private local addresses (private address)
    • Class A private-local 10./8
    • Loopback 127./8
    • Auto-config B private 169.254/16 (RFC 3927)
    • Class B private-local 172.16/12
    • Class C private-local 192.168/24
  • NAT and PAT (various flavors)
  • ARP and ICMP
• L4: Ports (well-known and ephemeral)
  • Except unix machines require superuser privilege to open a wel-known port, the differences are cultural, not technical
  • Well Known Ports
    — used by well-known, a.k.a. community developed and standardized, protocols.
  • Registered ports
    — claimed through IANA for typical use by a protocol
  • Ephemeral/Dynamic ports
    — reusable, temporary, and dynamically claimed by a host typically for the client side of any protocol.

Routing

• Autonomous systems (AS), interior and exterior routing
• Telia Looking Glass
• MIAMI-EDU 4511 and ASN lookup
• Local delivery vs. routing; known route vs. default route
• Distance vector Notes
• counting to infinity; split horizon and poison reverse
• Link State Protocols
• RIP, BGP, OSPF

TCP/IP

• IP details: Fragments, TTL
• IPv6
• Notes on TCP
• TCP Trace using tcpdump

Local Area Networks

• Carrier Sense Multiple Access / Collision Detect (exponential backoff)
• Data signaling
  • 10Base-5: manchester encoded half-duplex 10Mbs
  • 10Base-T: Manchester Encoding full duplex over 4-pair unshielded twisted pair.
  • 100Base-TX:, MLT-3 and 4B5B line encoding.
  • 1000Base-T: 8B10B symbol encoding with PAM-5 line encoding, over 4 pairs simultaneously (256 symbols), with Trellis Forward Error Correction
  • 1000Base-SX: optical short distance, -LX long distance optical
• Ethernet frames
  • Preamble and SFD
  • Ether Type 0x0600 and up, ex 0x0800 IP and 802.1Q tag 0x8100
  • Length (0x5ff and down) and the SNAP
  • Frame Check Sequence
• MAC addresses
• Broadcast, and multicast; the broadcast domain
• WiFi
  • Class blog about WiFi.
  • Javvin documentation
  • BSS and infrastructure
  • Associations
  • Protocol: RTS, CTS, NAV and positive acknowledgment
  • Frame structure, relay addressing
  • Routing, bridging, and switching
  • Other: the beacon, and power-down buffering
• Switches, bridges, and hubs
  • bridge transparency
  • Learning bridges
  • Bridge Spanning Tree Protocol (IEEE 802.1D)

Security Basics

• Authentication primer
  • Passwords and entropy measurements
    • Bonneau, Just and Matthews
  • Dictionary attacks; hashing
  • Skimmers, sniffers, and Trojans
  • Key Loggers
  • One-time-passords and multi-factor authentication: e.g. sKey, SecureID
  • Challenge response: e.g. NTLM
  • Indirect Authentication: e.g. RADIUS
  • Needham-Schroeder and Kerberos
  • Diffie-Helman (jupyter notebook)
  • Authentication Providers and Single-signon: e.g. Central Authentication Service (CAS)
• Encryption
  • Vernam cipher
  • Perfect secrecy
  • Semantic security, randomized encryption
  • Initial vectors and Modes of operation
  • Message Integrity, the MAC.
  • Notes on the vernam cipher, entropy and perfect secrecy.
• Public Key Encryption
• SSL & TLS
  • SSL Tutorial
  • Public Key Infrastructure and digital signatures
• Code signing

Application Layer Case Studies: UDP

• Domain Name Service (DNS). See RFC 1034 and RFC 1035.
• Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) RFC 2131
• Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP)
• Conclusions concerning protocol design

Application Layer Case Studies: TCP

• email
  • Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SNMP)
  • Post Office Protocol (POP)
  • Internet Mail Access Protocol (IMAP)
  • Overview of architecture and protocols
  • Example of spam defense
  • Sender Policy Framework
  • DKIM (wiki)
• HTTP
  • The Form
  • POST trace
  • caching, proxies
  • redirects
  • cookies and Sessions

Network Attacks

• Code injection
  • The Morris worm, Nov 2, 1988. Washington Post
  • Stack Smashing. Smashing The Stack For Fun And Profit by Aleph One (Internet Cafe with interview)
  • shell code: from shell-storm.org; from exploit-db.com
  • Return oriented programming (PDF) (ROP without returns)
  • ROP from shell storm.
  • Slapper (2002): heap smashing
• Virus
  • email: Melissa virus (1999)
• Application injections
  • HTTP query strings, injections
  • SQL injections
  • XSS: Cross Site Scripting Samy is my hero (2005)
• Dan Kaminsky steals the internet
  • more on this
• Breaking SAML (PDF)

Quizzes for CSC424 Communications and Security.

See my subversion tutorial for getting a start with Subversion.

Quiz 1:

See [repo]/class/quiz1/quiz1.txt for instructions.
Due: Monday, January 27, midnight.

Quiz 2:

See [repo]/class/quiz2/quiz2.txt for instructions.
Due: Monday, January 27, midnight.

Quiz 3:

See [repo]/class/quiz3/quiz3.txt for instructions.
Due: Friday, January 31, midnight.

Projects for CSC424 Communications and Security.

Project 0: Up and running

• General computing requirements
  • Thou shalt ...
• Amazon Web Services
  • Using AWS
  • Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide for Linux Instances
• Subversion
  • Burt's New Subversion Tutorial
  • Subversion
• Progammer's editor
  • BBedit

Examples:

• Example A: Hello World
  • See [repo]/class/examples/hello-world for code and makefile
  • Due: There are no due dates, nothing to turn in, for examples.
• Example B: Netbounce Example
  • Netbounce homepage
  • Due: There are no due dates, nothing to turn in, for examples.

Assignments:

• Project 1: Arrange Project
  • Detailed instructions for the Arrange Project.
  • Due: Wednesday, Feb 5.
• Project 2: Packet Pass Around
  • Detailed instructions for the Packet Pass Around Project.
  • Due: Friday, Feb 21.
  • Packet Passaround Bake-off: Friday, Feb 28.
  • Packet Passaround Bake-off, round two: Friday, Apr 3.
• Project 3: Truly Trivial File Transfer Protocol
  • Detailed instructions for the TTFTP project.
  • Due: Monday, March 16 30.
  • Until April 4, corrected project 3 are accepted.
  • Project 3 second call: Friday, Apr 24.
  • Project 3 third call: Friday, May 1.
• Project 4: A Mini-Radius Protocol
  • Detailed instructions for the Mini-Radius project.
  • Due: Wednesday, 6 May.

References for CSC424 Communications and Security.

• AT&T Archives: Switchboards, Old and New (youtube)
• The Life of a Telephone Operator in 1969 (youtube)
• Training For Service, 1926 — AT&T Archives — Telephone Operator recruiting (youtube)
• AT&T Achives: The step by step switch (youtube)
• What's in a Name? Evaluating Statistical Attacks on Personal Knowledge Questions, Joseph Bonneau, Mike Just, Greg Matthews.