National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations Program
NYU Tandon School of Engineering is one of about 20 graduate schools in the country to have the designation of National Centers of Academic Excellence (CAE) in Cyber Operations. The CAE-Cyber Operations program is intended to be a deeply technical, interdisciplinary, higher education program firmly grounded in the computer science (CS), computer engineering (CE), and/or electrical engineering (EE) disciplines, with extensive opportunities for hands-on applications via labs/exercises.
National Centers of Academic Excellence - Cyber Operations
Students who wish to receive an acknowledgment that they have completed the NSA Cyber Operation Program must successfully complete the following courses:
- 3 Credits Design and Analysis of Algorithms I CS-GY 6033
- This course reviews basic data structures and mathematical tools. Topics: Data structures, priority queues, binary search trees, balanced search trees. Btrees. Algorithm design and analysis techniques illustrated in searching and sorting: heapsort, quicksort, sorting in linear time, medians and order statistics. Design and analysis techniques: dynamic programming, greedy algorithms. Graph algorithms: elementary graph algorithms (breadth first search, depth first search, topological sort, connected components, strongly connected components), minimum spanning tree, shortest path. String algorithms. Geometric algorithms. Linear programming. Brief introduction to NP completeness.
Knowledge of Discrete Math equivalent to CS-GY 6003, and knowledge of Fundamental Data Structures. Prerequisites: Graduate Standing - 3 Credits Introduction to Operating Systems CS-GY 6233
- This course introduces basic issues in operating systems. Topics: Threads, processes, concurrency, memory management, I/O Control and case studies.
Prerequisite: Graduate standing. - 3 Credits Information Systems Security Engineering and Management CS-GY 6803
- This course presents a system and management view of information security: what it is, what drives the requirements for information security, how to integrate it into the systems-design process and life-cycle security management of information systems. A second goal is to cover basic federal policies on government information security and methodologies. Topics include information-security risk management, security policies, security in the systems-engineering process, laws related to information security and management of operational systems.
Prerequisite: Graduate standing. *Online version available. - 3 Credits Information, Security and Privacy CS-GY 6813
- This course introduces Information Systems Security and covers cryptography, capability and access control mechanisms, authentication models, security models, operating systems security, malicious code, security-policy formation and enforcement, vulnerability analysis, evaluating secure systems.
Prerequisite: Graduate standing. *Online version available. - 3 Credits Network Security CS-GY 6823
- This course begins by covering attacks and threats in computer networks, including network mapping, port scanning, sniffing, DoS, DDoS, reflection attacks, attacks on DNS and leveraging P2P deployments for attacks. The course continues with cryptography topics most relevant to secure networking protocols. Topics covered are block ciphers, stream ciphers, public key cryptography, RSA, Diffie Hellman, certification authorities, digital signatures and message integrity. After surveying basic cryptographic techniques, the course examines several secure networking protocols, including PGP, SSL, IPsec and wireless security protocols. The course examines operational security, including firewalls and intrusion-detection systems. Students read recent research papers on network security and participate in an important lab component that includes packet sniffing, network mapping, firewalls, SSL and IPsec.
Prerequisite: Graduate standing. * Online version available. - 3 Credits Computer Networking CS-GY 6843
- This course takes a top-down approach to computer networking. After an overview of computer networks and the Internet, the course covers the application layer, transport layer, network layer and link layers. Topics at the application layer include client-server architectures, P2P architectures, DNS and HTTP and Web applications. Topics at the transport layer include multiplexing, connectionless transport and UDP, principles or reliable data transfer, connection-oriented transport and TCP and TCP congestion control. Topics at the network layer include forwarding, router architecture, the IP protocol and routing protocols including OSPF and BGP. Topics at the link layer include multiple-access protocols, ALOHA, CSMA/CD, Ethernet, CSMA/CA, wireless 802.11 networks and linklayer switches. The course includes simple quantitative delay and throughput modeling, socket programming and network application development and Ethereal labs.
Knowledge of Python and/or C. Prerequisite: Graduate standing. - 3 Credits Applied Cryptography CS-GY 6903
- This course examines Modern Cryptography from a both theoretical and applied perspective, with emphasis on “provable security” and “application case studies”. The course looks particularly at cryptographic primitives that are building blocks of various cryptographic applications. The course studies notions of security for a given cryptographic primitive, its various constructions and respective security analysis based on the security notion. The cryptographic primitives covered include pseudorandom functions, symmetric encryption (block ciphers), hash functions and random oracles, message authentication codes, asymmetric encryption, digital signatures and authenticated key exchange. The course covers how to build provably secure cryptographic protocols (e.g., secure message transmission, identification schemes, secure function evaluation, etc.), and various number-theoretic assumptions upon which cryptography is based. Also covered: implementation issues (e.g., key lengths, key management, standards, etc.) and, as application case studies, a number of real-life scenarios currently using solutions from modern cryptography.
Prerequisite: Graduate standing. - 3 Credits Application Security CS-GY 9163
- This course addresses the design and implementation of secure applications. Concentration is on writing software programs that make it difficult for intruders to exploit security holes. The course emphasizes writing secure distributed programs in Java. The security ramifications of class, field and method visibility are emphasized.
Knowledge of Information, Security and Privacy equivalent to CS-GY 6813. Prerequisite: Graduate standing
- Mobile Security CS-GY 9223
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Offensive Security CS-GY 9223 3 Credits
The CAE in Cyber Operations Summer Program (CAE-Cyber Ops SP) is the National Security Agency's (NSA) premier outreach program for students enrolled in the Cyber Operations specialization at NSA-designated universities. Selectees will be invited to participate in a 12-week summer program to gain knowledge of specific cyber-related topics and apply educational knowledge to address various real-world mission-related technical challenges. Participants in the program will work on a broad range of problems involving applications of computer science and engineering.