Syllabus

Course Title and Description

CPEN 542, “Cybersecurity,” is a Masters-level graduate course that introduces students to the subject of cybersecurity from the technical, economic, and human points of view. The purpose of this course is to help students in learning the principles of cybersecurity in general and of designing secure cyber systems and infrastructures in particular.

For the course description and pre/co-requisites, see the entry for CPEN courses in UBC Academic Calendar.

Registration restrictions: see the course entry in the UBC Course Schedule.

Announcements: All announcements for the course are made either during sessions or on Canvas (in Discussions module).

Contact Information

  • For all enquiries, contact teaching assistants of the course by sending a private message to the teaching staff on Canvas.
  • You can contact the course instructor during his office hours (see the course session calendar) or right after the class.

Course Instructor: Prof. Konstantin Beznosov, Ph.D., PEng. Office hours: see course calendar, online.

Teaching Assistant: Yue Huang, Ph.D. candidate: no office hours.

Course Structure, Activities, and Assessment

In order to pass the course, each student must complete the following modules:

  1. Term Paper

    Students will be responsible for a final paper. You should work individually or in groups. The maximum size of term paper groups will be announced by the instructor. Students form groups by themselves.

    The nature and the topic of the paper is your choice, as long as it relates to cyber security and privacy, interpreted broadly.

    Your group will need to present the project proposal and submit a short proposal (please see the Canvas site of the course for exact deadline information). It is highly advisable to get going early; we will gladly accept proposals before the deadline. This assignment gives the instructor a chance to review and approve your term paper proposal, and to suggest references that you may have overlooked.

    We also encourage you to discuss with the course instructor during their office hours what you want to do for the paper. See the course calendar for the deadline for such a meeting. Term papers will be presented at the end of the term. One whole day will be devoted to short presentations of each term paper.

  2. Presentation of the Term Paper

    Each group will present their term paper to the rest of the class. For in-person offerings of  the course, there will be a full-day mini-conference at the end of the course. For online offerings, the term papers will be presented during last several classes of the course.

  3. Quizzes

    In-class quizzes: There will be quizzes in most (if not all) class sessions. Quizzes will test your knowledge of the study material. In-class quizzes will be given during the first or last 10 minutes of the class. As such, students who start the quiz late, will have whatever time left before the quiz gets unpublished 10 minutes after the start. This policy aims to avoid situations when a student starts their quiz when almost everyone else has finished the quiz and now the whole class has to wait for that late student.

    To do in-class quizzes, each student will need to have a laptop and be logged into the course on Canvas. It’s the responsibility of each student to be ready for the quiz at the beginning of each class.

    Entrance Quiz:     This quiz will be given on Canvas during the second session of the course. It’ll help students to assess their own skills and required knowledge in relation to the expectations for the course. The quiz tests (1) students’ knowledge that they are expected to learn in prerequisite courses, and (2) their ability to study course material. Those students who score 65% or more on the quiz, will receive full credit for the quiz. Other students will receive no credit for the quiz.

  4. Mid-Term and Final Examinations

    There will be one mid-term and one final open-book examinations. See the course session calendar for the mid-term examination date. The date of the final examination will be set and announced by the UBC services. It’s the student’s responsibility to know the date, time, and location of the final examination.

  5. Sessions

When: Tuesday and Thursday, from 10:00 AM to 11:20 AM; September 8 to December 6, 2022.
Where: see the course entry in the UBC Course Schedule.

Attendance is mandatory and might be recorded. If a student has to miss a class must submit this academic concession form at their soonest convenience. It is the responsibility of each student to be aware of any announcements made during missed sessions and to know the material discussed at the sessions.

Sessions will be in flipped classroom format and will involve mostly group activities focused on problem solving. Slides used by the teaching staff during the class sessions will be posted on Canvas or the course session calendar in 5 business days.

COVID-19 Accommodations For Class Sessions

      • To accommodate those students who are unable to travel to Vancouver in time for the start of term (or have completed any quarantine requirements, or similar) due to Covid-19 travel restrictions, Zoom connections will be provided for those class sessions, which one or more registered students will miss due to the above circumstances. Zoom sessions will not be recorded. If a student cannot attend a class session in-person due to the above circumstances and would like to attend it via Zoom, they should notify the teaching staff (see “Contact Information” above) one business day before the session, so that the teaching staff arranges a zoom connection.
      • If the instructor is unable to lead a class session due to health reasons or positive COVID-19 test results, the class session might be conducted via Zoom or cancelled. Teaching staff will announce such changes on Canvas.

  2. In-Class Participation

    Participation during course sessions will be in groups. Students will be assigned to groups at the beginning of each class. All groups will be working on the same practice problems or questions. For each practice problem/question, after the time is up, a particular group and a particular student from that group will be chosen randomly. The chosen student will present on behalf of the group their solution to the problem or answer to the question. All students from that group (except for the absent ones) will receive the same participation mark. Absent students from the chosen group will receive 0. Course participation mark of each student will be averaged over all  participation marks that student receives during the term.

  3. Self-Study Before and After the Class Sessions

    Each student is expected to study all required material for each class. The study of all the required material should be guided by learning objectives for each study module. There will be also optional and bonus study material for some sessions, which will help you to gain deeper and/or broader understanding of a particular topic.

Grading

Grading will be done according to the following break-down:

Module

 Grade %
In-class participation 10
Entrance Quiz (5 points will be given only to those who get 65% or more on this quiz, the rest will get 0). 5
In-class quizzes on Canvas 10
Mid-term examination 10
Final examination 25
Term Paper (40%)

Term paper proposal presentation & write-up

 5

Term paper presentation

 7

Term Paper Pre-final draft (optional)

 9
Term Paper Final version (all the sections) 19

If the mean final mark for the cohort is less than 77%, the final mark of each student in the cohort will be pro-rated so that the mean final mark will be 77%.

Grading of Group Work

For teams of 1 or 2 students, each student will get the same individual mark as the group mark. For teams of 3 or more students, the contribution of each student to the term paper, its proposal, and presentation will be evaluated by the other team members, and prorated accordingly to the scores given by the other teammates.

Individual marks for group work (e.g., term papers, their proposals and presentations) is based on the group mark G (given by the teaching staff) and the teammates’ evaluations of individual student’s contribution (given by the team mates). Teammates’ evaluations are provided through iPeer. The course Canvas site lists deadlines for submitting these evaluations. These deadlines are usually few hours after the submission deadline.

Late submissions of the evaluations on iPeer are not accepted. If a student did not submit their evaluations of the teammates, individual marks of each student in the corresponding team are calculated as if that student assessed equally the contributions of their teammates. Based on the teammates’ evaluations of individual student’s contribution, each student S gets such a contribution coefficient Cs that  (C1+C2+C3+C4)/4 == 1. The individual mark of student s is Is == G*Cs. Therefore, if no student from the team has submitted an evaluation on iPeer, each student gets mark Is==G.

Course Content

For the list of topics to be covered in the course and their schedule, see the course session calendar.

Course Learning Outcomes

On completion of this course, students are expected to get oriented in the subject of cyber security and privacy. For details, see the learning objectives of each study material module.

Required Materials

All study materials can be purchased in (online and offline) bookstores.

  1. Mark Stamp, Information Security : Principles and Practice, Third Edition, Wiley-Interscience, 2021. This textbook might also become available online through UBC Library (CWL is required).
    Feel free to supplement your study of this textbook with watching the videos of author’s lectures closely based on the textbook.
  2. (recommended) Anderson, Ross. Security Engineering — A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems. John Wiley & Sons, 2020, Third Edition. See free chapters from this book online. UBC Library also has a PDF version of the book.
  3. (Some of the assigned required reading will be from this book) Paul C. van Oorschot, Computer Security and the Internet: Tools and Jewels, 2021, Springer. See free chapters from this book online.
  4. (Recommended for the classes on Bitcoin Case Study) Narayanan, Arvind, Joseph Bonneau, Edward Felten, Andrew Miller, and Steven Goldfeder. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency technologies: a comprehensive introduction. Princeton University Press, 2016.

Course Policies

Quizzes Policy

  1. All quizzes are open-book and must be taken in the class. Each student is required to have a laptop or some other devices suitable for taking a quiz via Canvas.
  2. In-class quizzes will be given during the first or last 10 minutes of the class. As such, students who start the quiz late, will have whatever time left before the quiz gets unpublished 10 minutes after the start. This policy aims to to avoid situations when a student starts their quiz when almost everyone else has finished the quiz, and now the whole class has to wait for that late student.
  3. No make-up quizzes will be given, irrespectively of the reason for missing the quiz. Instead, each student will get up to 20% extra of the quiz mark for the final mark in the course.
  4. Those students who score 65% or more on the Entrance Quiz, will receive full credit for the quiz. Other students will receive no credit for the Entrance Quiz.

Late Submission Policies

Unless specified otherwise, late submissions of proposals, reports, and other work are accepted and the following penalty scheme is applied to late submissions, irrespectively of the reason for the late submission: The mark for a late submission is reduced by 5% for each late hour or any portion of it. ABSOLUTELY NO EXCEPTIONS WHATSOEVER!

Examples:

  • a work submitted 1m late will get mark of 95%, at most.
  • a work submitted 1h15m late will get mark of 90%, at most.
  • a work submitted 9h1m late will get mark of 50%, at most.
  • a work submitted 15h5m late will get mark of 10%, at most.

Examinations Policies

  1. Both mid-term and final examinations are open-book.
  2. No make-up mid-term exam will be given, irrespectively of the reason for missing the exam.
  3. If a student misses the mid-term examination, their mid-term mark will be the same (percentage wise) as their final examination mark.
  4. If a student misses the final examination, their final exam mark will be 0 and they will fail the course, unless UBC Administration grants this student deferred examination option.

In Term Concessions

Students who miss in-term work for this course and are requesting academic concession must submit this concession form at the soonest convenience.

How in term concessions will be handled:

  • No make-up in-class quizzes will be given, irrespectively of the reason for missing the quiz. Instead, each student will get up to 20% extra of the quiz mark for the final mark in the course. No concession will be offered on the Entry Quiz.
  • If a student misses the mid-term examination, their mid-term mark will be the same (percentage wise) as their final examination mark.
  • If a student misses final examination, their final exam mark will be 0 and they will fail the course, unless UBC Administration grants this student deferred examination option.
  • If a student misses a class session, in which their assigned group is chosen to present, the student must submit the above concession form, in order to avoid receiving 0 for that presentation.

Academic Integrity

All students are expected to engage in all course activities within the norms of academic integrity. It is the responsibility of each student to know about academic integrity and plagiarism by studying materials of the UBC’s Academic Integrity Resource Centre. A description of disciplinary measures for academic misconduct can be found here.

The teaching staff reserves the right to check for academic integrity using such services as turnitin any submitted written work by any student.

University Policies

UBC provides resources to support student learning and to maintain healthy lifestyles but recognizes that sometimes crises arise and so there are additional resources to access including those for survivors of sexual violence. UBC values respect for the person and ideas of all members of the academic community. Harassment and discrimination are not tolerated nor is suppression of academic freedom. UBC provides appropriate accommodation for students with disabilities and for religious, spiritual and cultural observances. UBC values academic honesty and students are expected to acknowledge the ideas generated by others and to uphold the highest academic standards in all of their actions. Details of the policies and how to access support are available here.

Statement From UBC Provost About Academic Freedom and Online Course Offerings

During this pandemic, the shift to online learning has greatly altered teaching and studying at UBC, including changes to health and safety considerations. Keep in mind that some UBC courses might cover topics that are censored or considered illegal by non-Canadian governments. This may include, but is not limited to, human rights, representative government, defamation, obscenity, gender or sexuality, and historical or current geopolitical controversies. If you are a student living abroad, you will be subject to the laws of your local jurisdiction, and your local authorities might limit your access to course material or take punitive action against you. UBC is strongly committed to academic freedom, but has no control over foreign authorities (please read an articulation of the values of the University conveyed in the Senate Statement on Academic Freedom). Thus, we recognize that students will have legitimate reason to exercise caution in studying certain subjects. If you have concerns regarding your personal situation, consider postponing taking a course with manifest risks, until you are back on campus or reach out to your academic advisor to find substitute courses. For further information and support, please read UBC position on the Freedom of Expression.