IS/Information

Area
of
Security,
Specialization
MSCE/Networks
This course is designed for graduate students with information
security and computer engineering backgrounds. This will be 3
credit hours course. This course will include lectures, assignments,
mid & final terms and labs.

Course Outline

Goal: The goal of this course is to familiarize information security

and computer engineering graduate students with the strategies on
how to scan, test, hack and secure their own systems. The study
environment gives student in-depth knowledge and experience with
the current essential security systems. Course will begin by
understanding how perimeter defenses work and then leads into
scanning and attacking networks (no real network is harmed).
Students then learn how intruders escalate privileges and what
steps can be taken to secure a system. Students will also learn
about intrusion detection, policy creation, social engineering, DDoS
Attacks, buffer overflows and virus creation. The last part of the
course will deal with network management topics particularly SNMP
v3 plus tools like Radmin and RMON.
This course is divided into five parts:
Network assessment concepts: In this part, introduction to
network assessment, assessment phases, types of attacks, controls,
assessment techniques, roadmap, social engineering, importance of
network assessment in todays world are discussed.
Network pre-assessment: In this part, footprinting, network
reconnaissance, network scanning and network enumeration are
discussed. Allied concepts helpful in upcoming stages will also be
introduced in this part like cryptography and steganography etc.

Contents

Network/system level attacks: In this part, network and

system level attacks are discussed that contains but not limited to
password cracking, privilege escalation, backdoors, Trojans, viruses,
worms, sniffing, denial of service and wireless network
compromises were discussed along with their countermeasures for
better protection and security.
Application/server level attacks: In this part, session
hijacking, attacks on web servers, attacks on web applications, SQL
injections techniques, IDS and firewall compromises and buffer
overflow and their countermeasures are discussed.
Network operation center/information security operation
center: Effective network management to detect and thwart
network attacks.
Patrick Engebretson, The Basics of Hacking and
Penetration Testing, Syngress Press, ISBN 978-1-59749-655-1,
2011.

Suggested Text

Thomas Wilhelm, Professional Penetration

Syngress Press, ISBN 978-1-59749-425-0, 2010.

Testing,

Latest research papers on Security assessment techniques,

NOC and ISOC