Course Description
==================

Software Security is an "emergent property" of
a software system that is
difficult to define. Software security goes
beyond software correctness and also beyond cryptographic
and network security.
Software Security is a moving target that requires
frequent attention to address the current risks in
using a software system.

The risks change as the government laws and the cleverness of the
intruders change. New programming technologies give 
rise to better ways of protecting software systems
but they also give the intruders new tools to attack systems.

We live in homes for thousands of years, but we are still
concerned with security and there are many home security
systems for sale. The same will apply to software security:
it will be an ongoing concern.

There are interesting trade-offs between the cost of
a software system and its use 
and its security. Higher security means higher design cost 
and higher cost of use.

Security can also be traded with other properties that people value.
Consider anti-lock brakes. They were intended to make driving safer.
But people have decided to trade time for security and
instead drive faster and closer to the car in front of them.
Therefore the accident rates have not changed much.
[Felten]

In this course we will cover important issues of
software security. The focus is on what can go wrong
in programs and how can we prevent or detect it.  
Therefore, we will study programs and classify them as good or bad.
There are commercial services available that
sell their security analysis skills.

We will explore techniques to enforce security policies
as a program executes. Having  a set of dynamically enforced
security policies makes it harder for intruders
because they also must follow those policies.

Grading
=======

Homeworks 20%
Project   30%
Midterm   20%
Final     30%

Syllabus
========

1. week: September 13

Jeanette Wing: A call to Action:
lectures/Software Security Wing.ppt

From the text book:
lectures/Software Security.ppt

Software Security Summer School 2004
Principles of System Security
Myers, Cornell: security properties, security mechanisms, information flow security
lectures/myers.pdf

2. Week: September 20
Security Policies: Binder
Software security: The Achilles' Heel of Cyberdefense
lectures/cd-Exploting_Software.pdf
(McGraw/Hoglund)

Best practices of Software Security
lectures/Software_Security.pdf
(McGraw)

3. Week: Sep. 27
Formal Framework for Reasoning about Access Control Models
Using AspectJ for statically checking security policies
4. Week: Oct. 4
5. Week: Oct. 18 
6. Week: Oct. 25 MIDTERM
   The midterm will cover the topics covered in the assignments,
7. Week: Nov. 1
8. Week: Nov. 8
9. Week: Nov. 15
10. Week: Nov. 22
11. Week: Nov. 29
12. Week: Dec. 6
13. Week: Dec. 13 FINAL EXAM