Some of today's most damaging attacks on computer systems involve exploitation of network infrastructure, either as the target of attack or as a vehicle to advance attacks on end systems. This course provides an in-depth study of network attack techniques and methods to defend against them. Topics include firewalls and virtual private networks; network intrusion detection; denial of service (DoS) and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks; DoS and DDoS detection and reaction; worm and virus propagation; tracing the source of attacks; traffic analysis; techniques for hiding the source or destination of network traffic; secure routing protocols; protocol scrubbing; and advanced techniques for reacting to network attacks. Prerequisite: 18-630 OR 18-730.
