2008 Woodie Awards
Computer course to benefit students
By Rachel Seeman
Rocket News Editor
Issue date: 11/4/05 Section: News
|
The new course, "Practical Computer Security," will count as an enrichment course for math, science and technology section of liberal studies.
The class is a 300 level course and is meant for all students, with or without technical background.
It's intended to be a very practical introduction to the basic steps of protecting yourself when online, David Valentine, associate professor of computer science said.
"Security is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain," Valentine said.
Valentine will be teaching this course in a lecture-based fashion.
"You will be doing assignments largely on your own machine," Valentine said.
"It's unsettling to upgrade and you don't know what it is," Valentine said. "Most people don't know what's on there."
He said students will go home and check their firewall, Anti-virus software and system patches on their own computers.
These are three fundamental things that should be upgraded once a week because viruses are being introduced everyday, Valentine said.
"Microsoft products are the number one target," Valentine said.
In addition to viruses, identity theft and phishing will be discussed.
Valentine explained that phishing is when people fake who they are in an e-mail.
For example, an e-mail that appears to be from Chase Manhattan Bank might ask you to update personal information such as your Social Security number.
The course is a response to "The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace" from the Department of Homeland Defense, Valentine said.
"A fundamental part of the national strategy is to equip the general public with the tools they need to secure their own small piece of cyberspace," Valentine said.
One un-secure computer can let bad guys in, Valentine said. All computers are connected to each other when online.
Distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) is an attack on a computer or network that causes a loss of service. An example of this is Code Red, one of the first infamous DOD attacks.
The Code Red virus planted itself on un-secure machines and was set by the author to attack the White House Web site simultaneously, Valentine said.
Valentine said engineers were able to recognize the traffic and squelch it before the designated time of attack.
Had they not been able to stop it, the Web site would have become useless due to the numerous requests for information.
Valentine said a utility program can be used to erase the virus.
The prerequisite for this course is any computer science course or permission of the instructor.
