Splash Biography

Learn computer security by learning some of the basic tools, techniques, and vulnerabilities that are exploited to attack systems. Computer Security is a rapidly growing and interesting field, and with more and more devices connected, protecting information systems is more important than ever before. Learning defensive computer security is useful, but it is also important to understand the types of attacks these defensive measures are designed to prevent. Being able to carry out an attack gives someone a true idea of what an attack is capable of and the subtleties of how an attack works. This is a hands on lab that will teach the following security concepts and the attacks that make them necessary: Assume public computers are compromised: Ways to gain admin access to a computer Never type your password on a computer that you don’t know is secure: How key loggers can steal passwords Do not use secure passwords for computer user account login (and in general do not use the same password more than once): Recovering plain text passwords from windows machines Do not type passwords into sites that are not HTTPs: Network monitoring with wire shark Keep your software up to date: Server Service Vulnerability (documented by MS08-067, CVE-2008-4250) This class is in the form of a hands on lab where all students will be able to try these different attacks against test systems. In addition to teaching good security, this class serves as an intro to penetration testing (and you will learn what MS08-067 means).