Evolutionary Security: Winter 2025
Course Outline
Course outline for Evolutionary Security.
Literature Review
To help you write a literature review or the background of a research paper, read the following:
- Harvey, "What Is a Literature Review?" (DOC) (PPT)
- Taylor, "The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It"
Class Schedule (Readings & Notes)
January 7, 2025
Introduction
January 9, 2025
Introduction to Trust
January 14, 2025
Computational Trust
- Marsh, "Formalising Trust as a Computational Concept." (Chapters 1 & 3)
January 16, 2025
Biological Trust
- Bateson, "The Biological Evolution of Cooperation and Trust." (1988)
- Michod & Roze, "Cooperation and conflict in the evolution of multicellularity." (2001)
January 21, 2025
OceanStore & BOINC
- John Kubiatowicz et al., "OceanStore: An Architecture for Global-Scale Persistent Storage" (SIGPLAN 2000)
- Sean Rhea et al., "Pond: the OceanStore Prototype" (FAST 2003)
- Anderson, "BOINC: A System for Public-Resource Computing and Storage" (Grid Computing 2004)
January 23, 2025
Chubby & GFS
- Burrows, The Chubby Lock Service for Loosely-Coupled Distributed Systems (OSDI 2006)
- Sanjay Ghemawat et al., "The Google File System" (SOSP 2003)
January 28, 2025
Symbiosis
January 30, 2025
Tierra
- Tom Ray, Tierra (1992): Pixelated but with Figures, Clearer Text
February 4, 2025
Readings
- Neti, "Software diversity: Security, Entropy, and Game Theory." (HotSec 2012)
- Mansourzadeh, "A Fragility Metric for Software Diversity." (ASIA 2024)
Discussion Questions
- What is the basic model behind both of these systems? Hint: focus on the figures!
- What aspect(s) of security are these models capturing? What are they missing?
February 6, 2025
Readings
- Forrest, "Building Diverse Computer Systems." (HotOS 1997)
- Mansourzadeh, "Towards Foundational Security Metrics." (NSPW 2024)
Discussion Questions
- What security problems does the Forrest paper address? What problems does it not address?
- How plausible/realistic is the model in Mansourzadeh's paper?
- To what degree do the strategies described in the Forrest paper impact the KOSM and DESM metrics described in Mansourzadeh's paper?
February 11, 2025
Readings
- Forrest, "A Sense of Self for Unix Processes." (IEEE SP 1996)
- Forrest, "The Evolution of System-call Monitoring." (ACSAC 2008)
February 13, 2025
Project elevator pitches (presentations in class)
February 25, 2025
February 27, 2025
March 4, 2025
Early Literature Review due
March 6, 2025
- Obada-Obieh, "“Don’t Break My Heart!”: User Security Strategies for Online Dating." (USEC 2017)
- Obada-Obieh, "Can I believe you?: Establishing Trust in Computer Mediated Introductions." (NSPW 2017)
March 11, 2025
- Li, "Securing Email Archives through User Modeling." (ACSAC 2005)
- Li, "Fine-grained Access Control using Email Social Networks." (CATX 2013)
March 13, 2025
- Matrawy, "Mitigating Network Denial-of-Service Through Diversity-Based Traffic Management." (ACNS 2005)
- Inoue, "NetADHICT: A Tool for Understanding Network Traffic." (LISA 2007)
March 18, 2025
- Dabbour, "Towards In-Band Non-Cryptographic Authentication." (NSPW 2020)
- Foster, "Object-Level Recombination of Commodity Applications." (GECCO 2010)
March 20, 2025
- Findlay, "bpfbox: Simple Precise Process Confinement with eBPF." (CCSW 2020)
- Findlay, "Bpfcontain: Fixing the soft underbelly of container security." (arXiv 2021)
March 25, 2025
- Somayaji, "Principles of a Computer Immune System." (NSPW 1997)
- Somayaji, "Panel: The Future of Biologically-Inspired Security: Is There Anything Left to Learn?" (NSPW 2008)
March 27, 2025
April 1, 2025
Presentations, Day 1
April 3, 2025
Presentations, Day 2
April 8, 2025
Presentations, Day 3