Draft Syllabus / CS 294-28 / Network Security / Spring 2008


Here are the currently planned lecture topics for the course (subject to change). Generally, for each lecture the first paper is required reading and needs to be written up for homework 24 hours prior to the lecture. The remaining papers for the lecture are optional; ones for which the title is marked with a '*' will likely be covered in lecture equally to the first paper.


  1. Authentication / Identity
    Using Encryption for Authentication in Large Networks of Computers, Roger Needham and Michael Schroeder, CACM 21(12), Dec 1978
    Dos and Don'ts of Client Authentication on the Web, Kevin Fu, Emil Sit, Kendra Smith and Nick Feamster, USENIX Security 2001

  2. Denial-of-Service
    Inferring Internet Denial of Service Activity, David Moore, Geoffrey Voelker, and Stefan Savage, USENIX Security 2001
    Analysis of a Denial of Service Attack on TCP, Christoph Schuba et al, IEEE S&P 1997
    An Analysis of Using Reflectors for Distributed Denial-of-Service Attacks, Vern Paxson, Computer Communication Review 31(3), 2001

  3. Traceback
    Practical Network Support for IP Traceback, Stefan Savage, David Wetherall, Anna Karlin and Tom Anderson, SIGCOMM 2000
    Single-Packet IP Traceback, Alex Snoeren et al, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking 10(6), 2002
    Advanced and Authenticated Marking Schemes for IP Traceback, Dawn Song and Adrian Perrig, INFOCOM 2001

  4. Network Capabilities
    SIFF: A Stateless Internet Flow Filter to Mitigate DDoS Flooding Attacks, Abraham Yaar, Adrian Perrig, and Dawn Song, IEEE S&P 2004
    PI: A Path Identification Mechanism to Defend against DDoS Attacks, Abraham Yaar, Adrian Perrig and Dawn Song, IEEE S&P 2003
    A DoS-limiting network architecture, Xiaowei Yang, David Wetherall, Thomas Anderson, SIGCOMM 2005

  5. DoS Defense
    SOS: Secure overlay services, A. Keromytis, V. Misra, and D. Rubenstein, SIGCOMM 2002
    New client puzzle outsourcing techniques for DoS resistance, Brent Waters, Ari Juels, J. Alex Halderman, Edward W. Felten, CCS 2004
    Mayday: Distributed Filtering for Internet Services, David Andersen, USITS 2003

  6. Network intrusion detection
    Bro: A System for Detecting Network Intruders in Real-Time, Vern Paxson, Computer Networks, 31(23-24), pp. 2435-2463, 14 Dec. 1999.
    NetSTAT: A Network-based Intrusion Detection System, Giovanni Vigna and Richard Kemmerer, Journal of Computer Security 7(1), pp 37-71, 1999
    Snort - Lightweight Intrusion Detection for Networks, Martin Roesch, LISA '99
    Intrusion and intrusion detection, John McHugh, International Journal of Information Security 1(1), 14-35, 2001

  7. NIDS Evasion
    Network Intrusion Detection: Evasion, Traffic Normalization, and End-to-End Protocol Semantics, Mark Handley, Christian Kreibich and Vern Paxson, USENIX Security 2001
    Insertion, Evasion, and Denial Of Service: Eluding Network Intrusion Detection, Thomas H. Ptacek and Timothy N. Newsham, Secure Networks techncial report, 1998
    Robust TCP Stream Reassembly in the Presence of Adversaries, Sarang Dharmapurikar and Vern Paxson, USENIX Security 2005
    Denial of Service via Algorithmic Complexity Attacks, Scott Crosby and Dan Wallach, USENIX Security 2003

  8. NIDS Evaluation
    Testing Intrusion Detection Systems: A Critique of the 1998 and 1999 DARPA Off-line Intrusion Detection System Evaluation as Performed by Lincoln Laboratory, John McHugh, ACM Transactions on Information and System Security, 3(4). November, 2000.
    Difficulties in Simulating the Internet, Sally Floyd and Vern Paxson, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking 9(4), 2001
    Strategies for Sound Internet Measurement, Vern Paxson, Proc. ACM IMC 2004

  9. The Threat of Worms
    How to 0wn the Internet in Your Spare Time, Stuart Staniford, Vern Paxson and Nicholas Weaver, USENIX Security 2002
    With microscope and tweezers: An analysis of the Internet virus of November 1988, Mark Eichin and Jon Rochlis, IEEE S&P 1989
    A Worst-Case Worm, Nicholas Weaver and Vern Paxson, Proc. WEIS 2004

  10. Worm signatures
    Polygraph: Automatically Generating Signatures for Polymorphic Worms, James Newsome, Brad Karp and Dawn Song, IEEE S&P 2005
    Automated worm fingerprinting, Sumeet Singh, Cristian Estan, George Varghese, Stefan Savage, OSDI 2004
    On Deriving Unknown Vulnerabilities from Zero-Day Polymorphic and Metamorphic Worm Exploits, Jedidiah Crandall, Zhengon Su, S. Felix Wu, and Frederic Chong, CCS 2005

  11. Worm detection
    Scalability, fidelity, and containment in the Potemkin virtual honeyfarm, Michael Vrable et al, SOSP 2005
    A behavioral approach to worm detection, Daniel Ellis, John Aiken, Kira Attwood, Scott Tenaglia, WORM 2004
    Design Space and Analysis of Worm Defense Strategies, David Brumley, Li-Hao Liu, Pongsin Poosankam and Dawn Song, ASIACCS'06
    Can we contain Internet worms?, Manuel Costa, Jon Crowcroft, Miguel Castro and Antony Rowstron, HotNets III 2004

  12. Forensics
    Toward a Framework for Internet Forensic Analysis, Vyas Sekar, Yinglian Xie, David A. Maltz, Michael K. Reiter and Hui Zhang, HotNets 2004
    Exploiting Underlying Structure for Detailed Reconstruction of an Internet Scale Event, Abhishek Kumar, Vern Paxson and Nicholas Weaver, Proc. ACM IMC, October 2005

  13. Scanning
    Fast Portscan Detection Using Sequential Hypothesis Testing, Jaeyeon Jung, Vern Paxson, Arthur Berger, and Hari Balakrishnan, IEEE S&P 2004
    The art of portscanning, Fyodor, Phrack Magazine 7(51), 1997
    DNS-based Detection of Scanning Worms in an Enterprise Network, David Whyte, Evangelos Kranakis, Paul C. van Oorschot, NDSS 2005
    New Streaming Algorithms for Fast Detection of Superspreaders, Shobha Venkataraman, Dawn Xiaodong Song, Phillip B. Gibbons, Avrim Blum, NDSS 2005
    A Brief History of Scanning, Mark Allman, Vern Paxson and Jeff Terrell, IMC 2007

  14. Side Channels
    Remote Timing Attacks are Practical, David Brumley and Dan Boneh, USENIX Security 2003
    Information Leakage from Optical Emanations, Joe Loughry and David Umphress, ACM Transactions on Information and System Security, 5(3) 2002

  15. Traffic Analysis I
    Timing Analysis of Keystrokes and Timing Attacks on SSH, Dawn Song, David Wagner, Xuqing Tian, USENIX Security 2001
    Detecting stepping stones, Yin Zhang and Vern Paxson, USENIX Security 2000
    Tracking Anonymous Peer-to-Peer VoIP Calls on the Internet, Xinyuan Wang, Shiping Chen, Sushil Jajodia, CCS 2005

  16. Traffic Analysis II
    Statistical Identification of Encrypted Web Browsing Traffic, Qixiang Sun et al, IEEE S&P 2002
    BLINC: Multilevel Traffic Classification in the Dark, Thomas Karagiannis, Konstantina Papagiannaki, Michalis Faloutsos, SIGCOMM 2005

  17. Web Attacks
    Anomaly Detection of Web-based Attacks, Christopher Kruegel and Giovanni Vigna, CCS 2003
    *The Ghost In The Browser: Analysis of Web-based Malware, Niels Provos, Dean McNamee, Panayiotis Mavrommatis, Ke Wang and Nagendra Modadugu, HotBots 2007
    SQL Injection Attacks by Example, Steve Friedl, http://www.unixwiz.net/techtips/sql-injection.html

  18. Botnets
    A Multifaceted Approach to Understanding the Botnet Phenomenon, Moheeb Abu Rajab, Jay Zarfoss, Fabian Monrose, Andreas Terzis, IMC 2006
    Revealing Botnet Membership Using DNSBL Counter-Intelligence, Anirudh Ramachandran, Nick Feamster and David Dagon, SRUTI 2006
    Wide-scale Botnet Detection and Characterization, Anestis Karasaridis, Brian Rexroad, David Hoeflin, HotBots 2007

  19. Attack infrastructure
    Examining the impact of website take-down on phishing, Tylor Moore and Richard Clayton, Proc. Anti-Phishing Working Group eCrime Researchers Summit, 2007
    Spamscatter: Characterizing Internet Scam Hosting Infrastructure, David Anderson, Chris Fleizach, Stefan Savage and Geoffrey Voelker, USENIX Security 2007

  20. Anonymity
    Tor: The Second-Generation Onion Router, Roger Dingledine, Nick Mathewson, Paul Syverson, USENIX Security 2004

  21. Infrastructure Protection
    Bootstrapping the Adoption of Internet Security Protocols, Andy Ozment and Stuart Schechter, WEIS 2006
    Modeling adoptability of secure BGP protocols, Haowen Chan, Debabrata Dash, Adrian Perrig, Hui Zhang, SIGCOMM 2006

  22. Secure Routing
    Secure Border Gateway Protocol (S-BGP) - Real World Performance and Deployment Issues, Stephen Kent, Charles Lynn, Joanne Mikkelson, Karen Seo, NDSS 2000
    *A Fundamental Look at DNSSEC, Deployment, and DNS Security Extensions, Geoff Huston, CircleID, 2006
    BGP Security Vulnerabilities Analysis, S. Murphy, RFC 4272, 2006
    Generic Threats to Routing Protocols, A Barbir, S. Murphy and Y. Yang, RFC 4593, 2006

  23. Wireless
    Intercepting Mobile Communications: The Insecurity of 802.11, Nikita Borisov, Ian Goldberg, David Wagner, MOBICOM 2001
    The Final Nail in WEP's Coffin, Andrea Bittau, Mark Handley, Joshua Lackey, IEEE S&P 2006

  24. Peer-to-Peer
    A Survey of Peer-to-Peer Security Issues, Dan Wallach, International Symposium on Software Security, 2002
    *SybilGuard: Defending Against Sybil Attacks via Social Networks, Haifeng Yu, Michael Kaminsky, Phillip Gibbons, Abraham Flaxman, SIGCOMM 2006

  25. Cellular
    On Attack Causality in Internet-Connected Cellular Networks, Patrick Traynor, Patrick McDaniel, and Thomas La Porta, USENIX Security 2007
    Proximity Breeds Danger: Emerging Threats in Metro-area Wireless Networks, P. Akritidis et al, USENIX Security 2007

  26. Trace anonymization
    The Devil and Packet Trace Anonymization, Ruoming Pang, Mark Allman, Vern Paxson and Jason Lee, CCR 36(1), January 2006

  27. Underground Economy
    The Underground Economy: Priceless, Rob Thomas and Jerry Martin, USENIX ;login:, 31(6), December 2006
    An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Internet Miscreants, Jason Franklin, Vern Paxson, Adrian Perrig, and Stefan Savage, CCS 2007