The schedule is tentative and subject to change! Always check the assignments the week before each class. Here is the class schedule from last offering for your reference.

Date Details
09/03 Orientation and logistics
Review assignment:
• None! Please make sure to attend class, as important logistics will be discussed!
Suggested reading:
• Introduction to Information Assurance
09/05 No class due to travel
Will post a video to watch!
09/10 Overview of USENIX Security'24 (Class over zoom due to travel, 10am-11:15am)
Review assignment:
• Pick a paper from USENIX Security'24 program and submit a review. We will be overviewing the program. Make sure to follow the suggested review format.
09/12 Essential Crypto
Review assignment:
• None! You can work on your project proposals!
09/17 Essential Crypto (Continued)
Review assignment:
• None! You can work on your project proposals!
Homework 1 released after class. Due in two weeks!
09/19 Anonymous Communications
Review assignment (pick one for each session; the order of papers is arbitrary!):
• Locating Hidden Servers
• Nymble: Blocking Misbehaving Users in Anonymizing Networks
• RAPTOR: Routing Attacks on Privacy in Tor
• Dissent: Accountable Anonymous Group Messaging
Other useful resources:
• Original Tor Design
• A decent collection of anonymity-related papers
09/24 Anonymous Communications (Continued)
Pick another paper from last class (above) and review!
09/26 Project Proposal Day (Class over zoom due to travel)
Tasks:
• Introduce your project in class in 2-3 minutes to get feedback and suggestion from others.
• Submit your 1-page project proposal on Canvas (by 10/03)
10/01 Censorship, Surveillance, and Wiretapping
Review assignment:
• MassBrowser: Unblocking the Censored Web for the Masses, by the Masses
• The Parrot is Dead: Observing Unobservable Network Communications
• The Waterfall of Liberty: Decoy Routing Circumvention that Resists Routing Attacks
10/03 Censorship, Surveillance, and Wiretapping (continued)
Review assignment:
• How the Great Firewall of China Detects and Blocks Fully Encrypted Traffic
• How China Detects and Blocks Shadowsocks
• Quack: Scalable Remote Measurement of Application-Layer Censorship
• Additional resource: A decent collection of censorship papers
Homework 2 released after class. Due in two weeks!
10/08 Data Privacy
Review assignment:
• BLENDER: Enabling Local Search with a Hybrid Differential Privacy Model
• Private Information Retrieval
• Quantifying Location Privacy
10/10 Privacy Leakage in Machine Learning
Review assignment:
• Membership Inference Attacks Against Machine Learning Models
• Model Inversion Attacks that Exploit Confidence Information and Basic Countermeasures
• Stealing Machine Learning Models via Prediction APIs
Optional reading:
• Privacy Risk in Machine Learning: Analyzing the Connection to Overfitting
• Machine Learning with Membership Privacy using Adversarial Regularization
• MemGuard: Defending against Black-Box Membership Inference Attacks via Adversarial Examples
10/15 No class (UMass Monday schedule)
10/17 Machine Learning Security
Review assignment:
• Stealing the Decoding Algorithms of Language Models
• Manipulating Machine Learning: Poisoning Attacks and Countermeasures for Regression Learning
• DeepXplore: Automated Whitebox Testing of Deep Learning Systems
• Machine Learning Models that Remember Too Much
Optional reading:
• Certified Robustness to Adversarial Examples with Differential Privacy
10/22 Trustworthy Federated Learning
Review assignment:
• Comprehensive Privacy Analysis of Deep Learning: Stand-alone and Federated Learning under Passive and Active White-box Inference Attacks
• How To Backdoor Federated Learning
• Back to the Drawing Board: A Critical Evaluation of Poisoning Attacks on Production Federated Learning
• Ditto: Fair and Robust Federated Learning Through Personalization
Homework 3 released after class. Due in two weeks!
10/24 Bitcoin and Blockchain
Review assignment:
• None!
10/29 Bitcoin and Blockchain (Continued)
Review assignment:
• Hijacking Bitcoin: Routing Attacks on Cryptocurrencies
• Eclipse Attacks on Bitcoin’s Peer-to-Peer Network
• Catena: Efficient Non-equivocation via Bitcoin
10/31 Overview of HW 3 and HW 4
No Review assignment.
11/05 No class (Election Holiday)
11/07 Intrusion Detection
Review assignment:
• BotMiner: Clustering Analysis of Network Traffic for Protocol- and Structure-Independent Botnet Detection
• Outside the Closed World: On Using Machine Learning For Network Intrusion Detection
• Kitsune: An Ensemble of Autoencoders for Online Network Intrusion Detection
• DeepCorr: Strong Flow Correlation Attacks on Tor Using Deep Learning
• Fingerprinting Electronic Control Units for Vehicle Intrusion Detection
11/12 Covert Channels + Side-Channel Attacks
Review assignment:
• Side-Channel Leaks in Web Applications: a Reality Today, a Challenge Tomorrow
• Hello from the Other Side: SSH over Robust Cache Covert Channels in the Cloud
• Exploiting a Thermal Side Channel for Power Attacks in Multi-Tenant Data Centers
11/14 Malware
Review assignment:
• Data Breaches, Phishing, or Malware? Understanding the Risks of Stolen Credentials
• MAMADROID: Detecting Android Malware by Building Markov Chains of Behavioral Models
• Sunrise to Sunset: Analyzing the End-to-end Life Cycle and Effectiveness of Phishing Attacks at Scale
• Click Trajectories: End-to-End Analysis of the Spam Value Chain
11/19 IoT/Embedded Systems Security
Review assignment:
• From the Aether to the Ethernet—Attacking the Internet using Broadcast Digital Television
• Understanding the Mirai Botnet
• Experimental Security Analysis of a Modern Automobile
• Security Analysis of Emerging Smart Home Applications
11/21 Overview of other topics
11/26 Final Project Presentations
11/28 Thanksgiving Holiday
12/03 Final Project Presentations
12/05 Final Project Presentations
12/10 Final Project Presentations