Brief description
“Personal” digital safety to make computer security fun, practical and eye-opening. Learn the base knowledge that will continue to be relevant to future generations of devices.
Module content:
• Current state of computer security
An overview including legal aspects.
• Cyber-attacks, vulnerabilities and threats
Malware, Network attacks (denial of service, packet sniffing etc.), bots and rootkits. How the bad guys can obtain your password.
• Information leakage
Recovery and forensics recovering deleted or corrupted files. What your browser knows about you. Web browser forensics.
• Securing networks, accounts and devices
Defence against malware, honeypots, Secure protocols, intrusion detection, Password security, Mobile device security.
• Human aspects of cyber security
The Psychology of Hackers, Social Engineering, identity theft, Usability vs security.
• Breaking the code
An introduction to cryptography, Encryption and Decryption, public and private keys, the key exchange problem.
• History of cryptography
The Caesar cipher, polyalphabetic ciphers, the Playfair cipher, the role of Enigma and the Bletchley Park cryptographers in WWII.
• Computers and Crypto Diffie-Hellman and RSA encryption
Phil Zimmerman and “Pretty Good Protection". Quantum Cryptography – Provably unbreakable information hiding. Mathematical Underpinnings – Large prime numbers and why they matter.
• Steganography
A picture's worth a thousand words when you're hiding the wood in the trees.
• The law, society and cryptography
Why you can be imprisoned for forgetting your password. The Civil Liberties Arguments for and against strong-crypto. International perspectives on information hiding, information freedom, the right to privacy and the conflicts between these. Are unbreakable cyphers an unqualified “good thing”?