General Information

Instructor Matt Bishop, 3059 Engineering Unit II; phone: 752-8060
Email: bishop@cs.ucdavis.edu; web page: http://seclab.cs.ucdavis.edu/~bishop
Office hours: TuTh 12:00 noon-1:00PM, by appointment or by chance
Lectures TuTh 10:30AM-11:50AM in 1062 Banier
Course Goals Some goals we hope you achieve:
  1. learn the importance of computer security;
  2. understand the basic issues in developing computer security policies and mechanisms;
  3. understand some of the basic theory underlying computer security policies, models, and problems
  4. learn about some of the mechanisms that protect systems; and
  5. analyze or survey some aspect of computer security or cryptography in depth.
Prerequisites The prerequisite for this course is ECS 150, Operating Systems, or an equivalent course. A course in abstract algebra, recursive function theory, or analysis of algorithms is strongly recommended, as this course uses advanced mathematics and mathematical techniques.
Text M. Bishop, Computer Security: Art and Science, Addison-Wesley, Boston, MA. ©2003. ISBN 0-201-44099-7
Class Web Site The class web site is on myucdavis. To access it, go to http://my.ucdavis.edu and log in using your campus-wide login and password. Then go to ECS 235 in your schedule. Handouts and other documents will be posted there. We will also post announcements there, too.
Class Newsgroup Information about this class, homework assignments, and so forth, will be posted to the newsgroup ucd.class.ecs235. Read this newsgroup daily! We'll use it to put out important information. Please do not post to this newsgroup. If you want to post things about the class, please use the appropriate discussion newsgroup (ucd.class.ecs235.d). Discussing something in that newsgroup is perfectly fair.
Homework All work is due at 11:55PM on the date stated on the homework, unless otherwise stated. See the handout All About Homework for more information.
Extra Credit Extra credit in this course will be tallied separately from regular scores. If you end up on a borderline between two grades at the end of the course, extra credit will count in your favor. However, failure to do extra credit will never be counted against you, because grades are assigned on the basis of regular scores. You should do extra credit if you find it interesting and think that it might teach you something. Remember, though, it is not wise to skimp on the regular assignment in order to do extra credit!
Grading 50% Homework, 50% Term Project
Academic Integrity Please see the Spring 2004 Class Schedule and Room Directory for a general discussion of this. In particular, for this course, all work submitted for credit must be your own. You may discuss your assignments with classmates, with instructors, or with teaching assistants or readers in the course to get ideas or a critique of your ideas, but the ideas and words you submit must be your own. Unless explicitly stated otherwise in the assignment, collaboration is considered cheating and will be dealt with accordingly.
A good analogy between appropriate discussion and inappropriate collaboration is the following: you and a fellow student work for competing software companies developing different products to meet a given specification. You and your competitor might choose to discuss product specifications and general techniques employed in your products, but you certainly would not discuss or exchange proprietary information revealing details of your products. Ask the instructor or a teaching assistant for clarification beforehand if the above rules are not clear.


Here is a PDF version of this document.