MS in Computer Science: Cybersecurity Track | School of Computing

Curriculum

Students complete the Cybercecurity Track by substituting four of the MSCS electives with four courses designated for this track — two are required and two are electives.

Required courses

Complete the two required courses.

CS 558 - Intro to Computer Security

The course provides an introduction to the principles and practices of network, computer, and information security. Topics include authentication and cryptographic techniques, intrusion detection, access control, security policies, and program/policy analysis techniques. Prerequisite: Undergraduate Operating Systems and Algorithms. Term offered varies. 3 credits Levels: Graduate, Undergraduate
CS 559 - Science of Cyber Security

This course focuses on techniques that approach cyber security problems in a principled manner using concepts from data mining, game theory, graph theory, and psychology. The intent of this course is to permit students to bridge the divide between real-world cyber threats and formal, scientific foundations of solutions that address such threats. Real-world cyber security issues, such as spamming, phishing attacks, malware, sybil attacks in social networks, and DDoS attacks, are used to illustrate how cyber threats can be modeled with abstract representations that are amenable to rigorous analysis and formal reasoning. The course also emphasizes the development of cyber defense mechanisms that are rooted in scientific foundations. Prerequisite: Undergraduate Operating Systems and Algorithms. Term offered varies. 3 credits. Levels: Graduate, Undergraduate

Elective courses

Complete two of the below listed electives. Please note that only one of CS 536 and CS 580E can be used as an elective in the Cybersecurity track.

CS 527 - Mobile Systems Security

This course discusses cybersecurity issues in various aspects of mobile systems, including mobile networks, mobile communications, mobile OSes, mobile applications, and mobile devices. It presents technical details of how mobile systems work and explains their vulnerabilities with potential security risks. The course uses a combination of real-world mobile devices and high-fidelity emulation testbeds to demonstrate common types of attacks in mobile systems as well as how to defend against these attacks. In this course, students are expected to gain hands-on experiences with mobile systems and learn basic techniques to tackle their cybersecurity problems. Credits 3 Prerequisite: CS 350 Operating Systems, or equivalents When offered: Expected to be offered at least once every two years Levels: Graduate, Undergraduate
CS 528 - Computer Networks

Communication protocols and layering, hardware-software infrastructures for networking, MAC protocols, data link protocols, switching, inter- and intra-domain routing, the TCP/IP protocol suite, transport protocols, application layer protocols, local and system area networks, wireless and sensor networks, overlay and virtual networks, client-server and peer-to-peer models, network programming with sockets, protocol design and implementation issues, network security. Prerequisite: Undergraduate Operating Systems. Term offered varies. 3 credits. Levels: Graduate, Undergraduate
CS 536 - Intro to Machine Learning

This course provides a broad introduction to machine learning and its applications. Major topics include: supervised learning (generative/discriminative learning, parametric/non-parametric learning, support vector machines); computational learning theory (bias/variance tradeoffs, VC theory, large margins); unsupervised learning; semi-supervised learning; reinforcement learning. The course will give students the basic ideas and intuition behind different techniques as well as a more formal understanding of how and why they work. The course will also discuss recent applications of machine learning, such as to data mining, bioinformatics, and information retrieval. Prerequisites: Undergraduate Algorithms, Probability with Statistical Methods. Term offered varies. 3 credits.. Levels: Graduate, Undergraduate
CS 580A - Special Topics
CS 580T - Special Topics
CS 553X - Software Security

This hands-on course covers offensive and defensive technologies in the area of software security. Particularly, students will learn about various vulnerabilities that lead to software compromise, attacks that exploit such vulnerabilities, and defenses that defend against such attacks. Topics covered include simple control-flow corruption attacks, slightly harder buffer overflow and return-to-libc attacks, advanced ROP attacks, Meltdown and Spectre attacks on the hardware. Students are expected to not only learn the concepts behind each attack, but also execute them in a controlled environment. Prerequisite: Undergraduate Operating Systems. Term offered varies. 3 credits. Levels: Graduate
CS 680P - Systems for Security & Privacy
CS 580E - Special Topics