Announcements

  • Congratulations on finishing CSCI E-159! 🎉
  • Final grades will be posted to your DCE student portal on Tuesday, May 27.

Description

The course is an introduction to cybersecurity for technical and non-technical audiences alike. Students learn how to secure their accounts, data, systems, and software against today’s threats and how to recognize and evaluate tomorrow’s as well, both at home and at work. Students learn how to preserve their own privacy. Students learn to view cybersecurity not in absolute terms but relative, a function of risks and rewards (for an adversary) and costs and benefits (for them), and to recognize cybersecurity as a trade-off with usability itself. The course presents both high-level and low-level examples of threats, providing students with all they need to know technically to understand both. Assignments are inspired by real-world events.

Table of Contents

Securing Accounts

  1. Watch Lecture 0 after 2025-01-27T00:00:00-05:00.
  2. Complete Quiz 0 by 2025-01-31T23:59:00-05:00.
  3. Attend section, live and with webcam and audio enabled (per sections’ norms).
  4. Optionally attend office hours.
  5. Complete Assignment 0 by 2025-02-09T23:59:00-05:00.

Securing Data

  1. Watch Lecture 1 after 2025-02-10T00:00:00-05:00.
  2. Complete Quiz 1 by 2025-02-14T23:59:00-05:00.
  3. Attend section, live and with webcam and audio enabled (per sections’ norms).
  4. Optionally attend office hours.
  5. Complete Assignment 1 by 2025-02-23T23:59:00-05:00.

Securing Systems

  1. Watch Lecture 2 after 2025-02-24T00:00:00-05:00.
  2. Complete Quiz 2 by 2025-02-28T23:59:00-05:00.
  3. Attend section, live and with webcam and audio enabled (per sections’ norms).
  4. Optionally attend office hours.
  5. Complete Assignment 2 by 2025-03-09T23:59:00-04:00.

Securing Software

  1. Watch Lecture 3 after 2025-03-10T00:00:00-04:00.
  2. Complete Quiz 3 by 2025-03-14T23:59:00-04:00.
  3. Attend section, live and with webcam and audio enabled (per sections’ norms).
  4. Optionally attend office hours.
  5. Complete Assignment 3 by 2025-03-30T23:59:00-04:00.

Preserving Privacy

  1. Watch Lecture 4 after 2025-03-31T00:00:00-04:00.
  2. Complete Quiz 4 by 2025-04-04T23:59:00-04:00.
  3. Attend section, live and with webcam and audio enabled (per sections’ norms).
  4. Optionally attend office hours.
  5. Complete Assignment 4 by 2025-04-13T23:59:00-04:00.

Exam

  1. Review information about the exam.
  2. Optionally watch recordings of the review sessions.
  3. Optionally attend office hours for any last-minute questions before the exam begins.
  4. Complete exam, once released, by 2025-04-27T23:59:00-04:00.

Final Project

  1. Begin thinking about your final project.
  2. Complete the final project proposal by 2025-04-18T23:59:00-04:00.
  3. Complete the final project status update by 2025-05-04T23:59:00-04:00.
  4. Submit the final project report by 2025-05-11T23:59:00-04:00.