CS 3C03 / SE 4C03
Computer Networks & Security — Winter 2014
http://bit.ly/1efvhnK
#mcmnet2014

• Instructor: Michael Soltys, email: soltys@mcmaster.ca
  Office hours: Mondays and Thursdays, 10:30-11:20, or by appointment.
• TA:
  • Neerja Mhaskar <pophlin@mcmaster.ca>
  • Amar Patel <patelab5@mcmaster.ca>
• Course Information (Last updated on Jan 6.)
• Lectures: Mo, Th, 9:30-10:20; Tu 10:30-11:20 in MDCL/1309
• Labs Schedule: All the labs will take place in ITB-235; times TBA; use Wireshark for the labs.
• Office Hours: TBA
• Course outline: Computer networks and the Internet. The 5 layer network stack: application layer (e.g., HTTP), transport layer (e.g., TCP), network layer (e.g., IP), link layer (e.g., ethernet), physical layer (e.g., fiber-optic cable). Wireless and mobile networks. Multimedia networking and network management. A large portion of the course will be dedicated to network security. We will finish with an overview of search engines and social media. A mixture of theory and programming assignments in Python.
• Textbook:

  Jim Kurose and Keith Ross Computer Networking: A top-down approach. 6th edition 2013 Published by Pearson

• Additional reading material.
• Previous versions of this course: 2013, 2012, and 2011,
• Finally, please read: McMaster Academic Integrity Statement.

Announcements:

• Apr 13: The course is over, the exam has been written on Saturday — thanks for being a great group! And the MD5 challenge answer is: 5ea4rx9o. I hope that after this course you will be excited to learn more networks and security!
• Apr 9: Added some more details to the solution to question 2 on Midterm 2.
• Apr 8: Assignment 2 and lab 2 grades are posted in the SVN repository.
• Apr 3: Here is the Kerberos protocol that was not well visible of the white-board today.
• Apr 1: The course is coming to an end; we are going to finish this week on Thursday by talking about the Needham-Schrodeder protocol, which is the basis of Kerberos. On Monday we will have a lecture on security (examining current trends and issues), and on Tuesday a review of the course. The exam is coming up soon, so here is what it will contain:
  • 3 questions on Networks: based on chapters 1-5.
  • 3 questions on Security: based on the slides, the lecture notes, and to a lesser extend on chapter 8 in the textbook.
  • each question will be worth 10, for a total of 60.
• Mar 28: Marking scheme for Midterm 2.
• Mar 26: The TA (Amar Patel) has had a health emergency today, and he will not be attending the lab; today's lab is cancelled.
• Mar 25: Please fill out the course evaluations:
  • evals.mcmaster.ca
  Instructions given here.
• Mar 24: Some notes on breaking the SH1 password by Kanishka Goel.
• Mar 20: The lab session on Tuesday, April 1st, will be only one hour long: 2:30-3:30. Please feel free to make an appointment with the TA (Neerja) if you need help but cannot come during that one hour.
• Mar 19: If you are interested about yesterday's lecture password cracking challenge, you can read some more about it here.
• Mar 18: Congratulations to Adam Brousseau who broke the first cypher challenge. The crypt password corresponding to seed 3z and hash f2laisA/GQ6 is abracadabra, and since only the first 8 characters count, abracada. In Adam's words: I used open source C code John The Ripper on my own local Linux machine. Processor is AMD 4 core 3.4 GHz (Single core used) (Phenom II X4 965 BE) Crack took 23 minutes 10 seconds.
• Mar 18: Midterm 2 with solutions posted below.
• Mar 7: Midterm 2 will take place on Monday March 17, and it will comprise: Chp 3: Sections 3.5-3.7, Chp 4, and Chp 5.
• Mar 6: Lab 1 and Assignment 1 grades have been posted in the SVN directory of one of the group members.
• Feb 25: Please send an email to Amar Patel to schedule your lab 2 presentation. Remember that you can present it on March 5 and 7.
• Feb 11: As we discussed the issues with assignment 1 in class today — regarding SSL on mills — you can do one of the following two:
  1. Use Python 2.4.3 on mills with the SSL function that wraps around the regular socket.
  2. Use Python 2.6.6 on penguin with the SSL library.
  In your PDF documentation, please specify which method are you using, so that we can grade accordingly.
• Feb 10: The Wireshark Lab 2 has been posted below. In order to give you more flexibility, please feel free to present your Wireshark Lab 2 to the TA Amar Patel as soon as you have it ready (which in practice means that you can presented early March 5th if you are ready), and no later than March 7th.
• Feb 10: Solutions to the midterm have been posted below.
• Feb 7: It seems like mills does not have the requisite SSL library (that Python 2.6 and higher are needed, while mills has 2.4). You should still implement it on your machine, include in the documentation how you did it, but submit a program that works on mills, which means, that your mills version will not have the SSL parts implemented.
• Feb 6: Please contact Neerja via email to choose a Lab 1 session with the following details: First and Last name, student id of each group member and the session you want. There will be 4 sessions. Below are the details:
  • Session 1 - 2:30 - 3:15
  • Session 2 - 3:15 - 4:00
  • Session 3 - 4:00 - 4:45
  • Session 4 - 4:45 - 5:20
  Student groups can pick one session only. There spot is confirmed only when Neerja replies. The sessions will be offered on first come first serve basis. If you don't come to the session that you choose, then will have to wait till the end or whenever there is a free spot available. The same applies to student groups who have not selected a session.
• Feb 3: Midterm 1 from February 3, the cancelled midterm, has been posted below with solutions.
• Feb 3: Today's midterm 1 was cancelled half way through due to the fire alarm. Everyone had to wait outside for 20 minutes before returning at 10:07. Therefore we will have a re-make of the midterm on Monday Feb 10. Please note that the re-make will consist of 3 questions just as midterm 1. Also, keep in mind that it will include chapters 1, 2 and chapter 3 sections 3.1-3.4. Do not assume that some parts will not be covered simply because they were not covered in the first version on Feb 3; obviously any midterm will consist of a selection of questions, but anything in the chapters/sections listed above is fair game.
• Jan 30: Slides on RDT (Reliable Data Transfer) have been posted in the Additional reading material.
• Jan 24: At this point you should read all the material up to the end of chapter 2. In chapter 2, you should do the examples in section 2.7, on socket programming.
• Jan 20: You can attend any lab section you want; the only mandatory labs are #5 and #8, when you present your Wireshark lab 1 and 2, respectively. Also note that you should work on your labs with the same group as you work on the programming assignments.
• Jan 18: The first programming assignment, implementing a rudimentary SMTP mail client, has been posted below.
• Jan 18: As of today you should read the textbook up to page 144 — all the material, including section 2.3 (FTP) and 2.4 (SMTP). On Monday (Jan 20) you will have an SVN tutorial during the usual lecture time; on Tuesday (Jan 21) we are going to cover section 2.6 (P2P) and on Thursday (Jan 23) we are going to cover section 2.7 (Socket Programming). We will start chapter 3, the Transport Layer, on Monday January 27.
• Jan 18: All the due dates have been posted below.
• Jan 13: Here is the SVN repository:

  https://websvn.mcmaster.ca/cs3c03-se4c03/<yourmacid>
  

• Jan 13: No office hours on Monday January 20.
• Jan 10: The first Wireshark lab has been posted below.
• Jan 10: Traceroute experiment.
• Jan 10: Where we are in the textbook: finish reading chapter 1, and do the review exercises 1-28.
• Jan 10: First batch of slides posted in the Additional reading material.
• Jan 9: The labs will be on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 2:30-5:20 on both days, in ITB-235, except that two labs will be on a Friday, same time and place.
• Jan 8: The labs will start on Tuesday January 21st.
• Jan 8: On January 20th, instead of the usual lecture, there will be an SVN tutorial given in class by Robert Li.
• The version of Python on mills.cas.mcmaster.ca is 2.4.3; for the two programming assignments, make sure that your final code compiles correctly on mills, since it is there that the TAs will be running your programs in order to grade them.
• First class on Monday Jan 6, 2014. Distributed the course info sheet; here is the updated version.

Labs, Assignments and Midterm:

The assignments in red will be graded.

Lecture Summary: