BIT Information Security

This course familiarizes with basic concepts of information security. This course includes cryptographic algorithms, authentication systems, access controls, malicious logics, network security and security audits and ethical issues.

The objective of this course is to familiarize the students with the concepts of information security, different security measures, policies and security mechanisms, security audits so that students will be able to design, implement and manage the information and computers securely.

Unit 1: Introduction (4 Hrs.)

1.1. Computer Security Concepts 1.2. Threats, Attacks and Assets 1.3. Security Functional Requirements 1.4. Security Design Principles 1.5. Attack Surfaces and Attack Trees 1.6. Computer Security Strategy

Unit 2: Symmetric and Asymmetric Encryption Algorithms (10 Hrs.)

2.1. Classical Cryptosystems: Substitution and Transposition Ciphers 2.2. Symmetric Encryption Principles 2.3. Data Encryption Standards (DES) 2.4. Basic concepts of fields, Modular Arithmetic, Galois Fields, Polynomial Arithmetic 2.5. Advanced Encryption Standards (AES) 2.6. Prime Numbers, Fermat's Theorem, Primality Testing: Miller-Rabin Algorithm, Euclidean Algorithm, Extended Euclidean Algorithm, Euler Totient Function 2.7. Asymmetric Encryption 2.8. Diffie-Hellman Protocol, RSA Algorithm

Unit 3: Message Authentication (6 Hrs.)

3.1. Message Authentication 3.2. Secure Hash Functions 3.3. Message Digests: MD5 3.4. Secure Hash Algorithms: SHA-1, SHA-2 3.5. Digital Signature

Unit 4: User Authentication (5 Hrs.)

4.1. User Authentication Principles 4.2. Password-Based Authentication 4.3. Token-Based Authentication 4.4. Biometric Authentication 4.5. Two Factor Authentication 4.6. Security Issues for User Authentication

Unit 5: Access Control (5 Hrs.)

5.1. Access Control Principles 5.2. Subjects, Objects and Access Rights 5.3. Discretionary Access Control 5.4. Role Based Access Control 5.5. Attribute Based Access Control 5.6. Identity, Credential and Access Management 5.7. Trust Frameworks

Unit 6: Malicious Software (6 Hrs.)

6.1. Malicious Software 6.2. Types of Malicious Software 6.3. Advanced Persistent Threat 6.4. Virus 6.5. Worms 6.6. Spam E-mail, Trojans 6.7. System Corruption 6.8. Zombie, Bots 6.9. Key loggers, Phishing, Spyware 6.10. Backdoors, Rootkits 6.11. Countermeasures for Malwares

Unit 7: IT Security Management, Risk Assessment and Security Auditing (5 Hrs.)

7.1. IT Security Management 7.2. Organizational Context and Security Policy 7.3. Security Risk Assessment 7.4. Security Risk Analysis 7.5. Security Auditing Architecture 7.6. Security Audit Trails 7.7. Implementing Logging Function 7.8. Audit Trail Analysis

Unit 8: Legal and Ethical Issues (4 Hrs.)

8.1. Cybercrime and Computer Crime 8.2. Intellectual Property 8.3. Privacy 8.4. Ethical Issues 8.5. Cyber Law in Nepal

The laboratory work includes implementing and simulating the concepts of cryptographic algorithms, hash functions, digital signatures, authentication & authorization systems, and malicious logics. The laboratory work covers implementing programs for the following:

• Classical ciphers like Caesar, Railfence
• DES, AES
• Primality Testing, Euclidean Algorithms, Diffie-Hellman, RSA
• MD5, SHA-1, SHA-2
• Authentication systems like password based, token based, two factor authentication etc.
• Access control and capability lists
• Malicious Logics

In addition, students have to perform case studies including preparation of security policies for some system and perform the security audits.