BSCS with Cybersecurity Track

Students complete this track by substituting four of the BSCS electives by four courses designated for this track — two are required and two are electives.

1. Complete the two required courses

• CS 458 - 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. Prerequisites: CS 350 and CS 375 (All prerequisites must have a grade of C- or better). Term offered varies. 4 credits Levels: Undergraduate

• CS 459 - 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: CS 350 and CS 375 (All prerequisites must have a grade of C- or better). Term offered varies. 4 credits. Levels: Undergraduate

2.    Complete two of the following electives

• CS 427 - 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. Prerequisite: CS 350 Operating Systems, or equivalents, CS 375 Design and Analysis of Algorithms. Term offered varies. 4 credits. Levels: Undergraduate

• CS 428 - 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: CS 350 (All prerequisites must have a grade of C- or better). Term offered varies. 4 credits. Levels: Undergraduate

• CS 436 - 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: CS 375 and MATH 327 or MATH 448 (All prerequisites must have a grade of C- or better). Term offered varies. 4 credits Levels: Undergraduate

• CS 453 - 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, and advanced ROP attacks. Students are expected to not only learn the concepts behind each attack, but also execute them in a controlled environment. Prerequisite: CS350 Operating Systems (All prerequisites must have a grade of C- or better) Term offered varies. 4 credits Levels: Undergraduate

Also available as 3-credit special topics courses: CS 480A (Hardware and Systems Security) and CS 480T (Topics in Data Privacy)