After successful completion of the course, students are able to use and extend state of the art security tools and 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 required software.

Security topics:

• Binary exploitation
• Reverse engineering
• Web security
• Cryptography
• Network security
• Forensics
• Mobile security
• Fuzzing
• Security of virtualized environments

Technical discussions on computer security problems and introduction to state of the art security tools. Participation to on-line international Capture The Flag security contests with WE_0WN_Y0U (https://w0y.at/).

The lecture is held in English.

ECTS Breakdown (6 ECTS = 150 hours):

• On-line meetings and presentations (20 hours)
• Individual project work (130 hours)

Participation to on-line international Capture The Flag security contests and a short talk on a challenge taken from a competition. Assessment of a project focused on protecting or attacking computer systems. Projects will be agreed upfront between lecturers and students and will include the development of innovative security challenges, the creation of new tools or contributions to existing open-source projects to extend the original capabilities. Depending on the estimated effort of each project, students will be allowed to work in groups.

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.