After successful completion of the course, students are able to actively participate in international IT security competitions, also called Capture The Flag (CTF). In particular, students will acquire the necessary technical skills to tackle modern security challenges and develop the software required to participate in such competitions.

Security topics:

• Binary exploitation
• Reverse engineering
• Web security (client/server side)
• Cryptography
• Network security
• Forensics
• Steganography
• Mobile security

Attack and defense strategies for IT infrastructures:

• Network traffic analysis
• Network and host-based intrusion prevention and detection systems
• Virtualization
• Distributed programming
• Fuzzing-based vulnerability assessment 
• Group management

Technical discussions on IT security problems and introduction to using security research tools. Participation to on-line international Capture The Flag security contests.

ECTS Breakdown:
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20h Meetings and presentation
130h individual project work
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150h (6 ECTS)
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Reports on the approach and technique employed to solve security challenges of international CTF competitions. Practical assessment of the tools developed to attack and defend IT infrastructures.

Background on system and web security. Basic programming and scripting skills (python and unix shell usage are strongly recommended). Good familiarity with the Linux operating system.