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Modern computer systems routinely handle high-value information such as financial data, economic transactions, and various forms of valuable intellectual property. Moreover, information systems are becoming pervasive, always-on and increasingly interconnected. New technologies have appeared that have definitely changed how internet and the web are used. Cloud computing, Software as a Service, Hardware as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service are the basis of what is generally called "Enterprise3.0". Scalability, performance, availability and security are the main features that must be provided to users of these modern architectures.
Designing and building secure, scalable information systems is a complex, interdisciplinary problem mixing elements of cryptography, software engineering, secure networking, as well as political and social challenges.
This course combines two main areas. Topics in Enterprise Digital Architectures analyze a modern enterprise data center, focusing on the technologies and on the main components, such as storage systems, high performance servers, network and security appliances and virtual machines.
Topics in Computer Security are an extensive introduction to the challenges of security engineering and to the methodology to build, validate, and (ethically) bypass security systems with the goal of learning how to secure them properly. During the lectures, we will analyze the various building blocks of a computer and information system, including their security subsystems. We will constructively analyze their vulnerabilities, see how these can be exploited, and deductively learn what was wrong and how to avoid repeating such engineering mistakes. The computer security topics are taught with a strong "hands-on" philosophy. Practical exercises will be conducted for all the topics marked with a (*) in the following syllabus. A "virtual hacking lab" will be available, where students can practice how to bypass and secure computer applications.
SYLLABUS
ENTERPRISE DIGITAL ARCHITECTURE TOPICS
1. Storage Systems
- Disk architecture and performance
- Configuration, performance and reliability of RAID systems
- Storage Architectures (NAS, SAN)
2. Performance and reliability
- Dimensioning an enterprise system
- Reliability basics
3. Virtualization and cloud computing
- Virtualization and cloud computing
- Basis of virtualization technologies
- Cloud computing architectures
- Networking in virtualized environments
- Big Data architectures
COMPUTER SECURITY TOPICS
1) Introduction to information security
- What is information security: examples
- Vulnerabilities, Risks, Exploits, Attackers: definitions
- Security as risk management
- Development of an enterprise security policy
2) A short introduction to cryptography
- Basic concepts: cypher, transposition, substitution
- Symmetric and asymmetric ciphers
- Hash functions, digital signatures and PKI
- Vulnerabilities in digital signature schemes and in PKI
- Why all of the above is almost useless as a security defense (*)
3) Authentication
- The three ways of authentication
- Multifactor authentication
- Authentication technologies evaluation; bypassing authentication control (*)
4) Authorization and access control
- Discretionary (DAC) and mandatory (MAC) access control policies
- Multilevel security and its applications: military secrets management
5) Software vulnerabilities
- Design, implementation and configuration bugs
- Typical memory errors: buffer overflow and format string bugs
- Exploiting applications and local privilege escalation (*)
- Web application security: introduction
- Typical code-injection vulnerabilities: cross-site scripting and SQL injections
- Hacking real web applications (*)
- Code review and fuzzing: finding bugs in real world applications
6) Secure networking architectures
- Network protocol attacks: sniffing, denial of service, spoofing, DNS poisoning, ARP poisoning
- Firewall: taxonomy and technologies
- Secure network architectures (DMZ and multi-zone networks)
- Virtual private networks (VPN)
- Secure connections and transactions: the tale of SSL and SET and their weaknesses
- Wireless security protocols (WEP, EAP, 802.1X, WPA)
- Networks security assessment tools (*)
- Intrusion detection systems
7) Malicious software
- The evolution of malicious software: from the Morris worms to modern malware
- Mobile malware: the case of malicious Android apps
- Botnets and underground economy
- Malware analysis and honeypots
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Inglese