CSCI 780 Data-driven Security and Privacy

​CSCI 780 data-driven security and privacy studies the design and implementation of secure computer systems utilizing data-oriented security analysis. Lectures cover threat models, attacks that compromise security, and techniques for achieving security, based on recent data-driven security research papers. Topics include the elements of data process techniques (such as natural language processing, machine learning); The applications of data processing techniques to various security and privacy problems, and practical issues arising from them; Secure and privacy-preserving machine learning algorithms; Attacks on machine learning algorithms.

Course information
Instructor: ​Xiaojing Liao (xiaojing@wm.edu)
Time: Tuesday, Thursday 12:30-13:50
Place: McGlothlin-Street Hall 2
Office hours: Tuesday, Thursday 14:00-15:30
Class Schedule
8/31                                 Course Overview                                                                                                 slides/syllabus
9/5                                    A Tour of Machine Learning Algorithms                                                         slides/reading
​9/7                                    Machine Learning for Security                                                                          slides/reading
​9/12                                  Privacy-preserving DL/Attack on ML                                            slides/reading1/reading2
​9/14                                  NLP for Security                                                                               slides/reading1/reading2
9/19                                  NLP for Security 2                                                                                               slides/reading
9/21                                  Cloud Security                                                                                  slides/reading1/reading2
9/26                                  Guest Talk (Dr. Dmitry Evtyushkin): Side Channel Attack                                       reading
9/28                                  Mobile Security                                                                                slides/reading1/reading2
10/3                                  Mobile Security 2                                                                             slides/reading1/reading2
10/5                                  Web Security                                                                                                       slides/reading
​10/10                                Cybercrime                                                                                                          slides/reading
10/12                                Threat Intelligence                                                                                             slides/reading
10/17                                No class (Fall break)
10/19                                PC meeting
10/24                                PC meeting
10/26                                Paper presentation
10/31                                No class (Travel to CCS)
11/2                                  No class (Travel to CCS)
11/7                                  Paper presentation
11/9                                  Paper presentation
11/14                                Paper presentation
11/16                                Paper presentation
11/21                                Paper presentation
11/23                                No class (Thanksgiving break)
11/28                                Project presentation
11/30                                Project presentation
12/5                                  Project presentation
12/7                                  Project presentation
​Prerequisites
​There is no specific prerequisite course for this research topic class, however, a good understanding of basic computer security concepts (CSCI 554 Computer and Network Security or equivalent), machine learning techniques and natural language processing techniques will be helpful.
Textbook
No textbook required: a fair number of research papers will be read.

Below are two reference books:
Hacking: The Art of Exploitation (2nd Edition) by Jon Erickson
​Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems (2nd Edition) by Ross J. Anderson ​
Grading
10%            Class Participant
15%            Paper review assignment
25%            Paper presentation
50%            Final project