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CYBV 326—Network Analysis

Course Description

BASV 326 provides students a methodology for analyzing networks by examining the network at its infrastructure, network and applications layers; exploring how they transfer data; investigating how network protocols work to enable communication; and probing how the lower-level network layers support the upper ones. Students will use hands-on labs and exercises to investigate and analyze network fundamentals. BASV 326 conforms to the National Security Agency (NSA) Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations (CAE-CO) academic requirements for networking principles.

Learning Outcomes

The student will:

• Identify the major network components and protocols that enable communications and data transfer.
• Define and describe the principal characteristics of the Application Layer
• Identify and explain the components and function of the Transport Layer
• Describe the characteristics of the Network Layer
• Recognize and differentiate the functions and protocols supporting the Link Layer
• Define and explain Wireless and mobile network architectures and protocols
• Explain the principles of computer security
• Exercise critical thinking strategies including reasoning, problem solving, analysis and evaluation by:
  • Analyzing network traffic and their protocol and services
  • Identifying and differentiating between connection and connectionless protocols
  • Enumerating network architectures through active and passive mapping and scanning
  • Using scanning techniques to determine the security posture of a network

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CYBV/BASV 329—Cyber Law, Ethics, Policy

Course Description

This course consists of a sustained study of ethical issues that arise in relation to employment in the public and private sectors, including allocation of resources, corporate and social responsibility, relationships, and discrimination. A main focus of this course will be on the ethical and legal standards governing information technology. New technology creates ethical challenges for individuals around the globe, and applies to most persons regardless of whether they are employed in the information technology field or a more traditional occupation. The study of Cyber Ethics provides a framework for making ethical decisions that professionals are likely to encounter in the workplace. This course will not only focus on ethics but on the economic, social, cultural and global impacts of decisions that are made in the context of most professional occupations.

When engaging in ethics, you will certainly encounter opinions painfully contrary to your own. When you find yourself in this position, I ask that you do your best to consider your interlocutor’s perspective as charitably as possible. Aristotle writes, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” As we will be considering moral positions and their applications from a multitude of perspectives, please keep these words in mind throughout the semester.

Learning Outcomes

The student will:

• Demonstrate an understanding of how ethical issues affect individuals, communities and societies and be able to analyze the consequences of various professional ethical dilemmas
• Demonstrate awareness and understanding of what is morally/ethically at stake in various situations
• Apply moral principles and standards of behavior in a workplace setting.
• Identify concepts such as ethics, morals, character, ethical principles and ethical relativism.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the importance of ethical issues that emerge from the widespread use of information technology.
• Identify appropriate and ethical behaviors, legal standards, and rights and restrictions, moral duties, when accessing technology systems, digital media, and information technology within the context of today’s society
• Apply an ethical decision-making process when confronted with ethical dilemmas
• Demonstrate an understanding of the ethical issues associated with confidentiality and privacy as they relate to information technology
• Given a cyber operations scenario, students will be able to explain the authorities applicable to the scenario
• Provide a high-level explanation of the legal issues governing the authorized conduct of cyber operations and the use of related tools, techniques, technology and data
• Identify organizations, laws and regulations related to computer ethics.
• Demonstrate investigative and analytical thinking skills by examining alternatives, exploring complex questions and solving challenging problems.

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CYBV-NETV 385—Intro to Cyber Operations

Course Description

CYBV 385 provides students an introduction to the concepts of cyber operations, applying fundamentals of Cyber operations to understanding cyber attack and defense concepts. Students will recognize common cyber-attacks and the techniques for identifying, detecting and defending against cyber security threats. Students will learn the basics of physical, system and web security as well as standards and laws in cyber security. Legal, ethical, and privacy issues will be discussed. Students will use hands-on labs and exercises to illustrate the workings of information security technologies. CYBV 385 conforms to the National Security Agency (NSA) Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations (CAE-CO) academic requirements for security fundamental principles as well as the identification and mitigation of security vulnerabilities.

Learning Outcomes

The student will:

• Recognize the fundamental principles underlying cyber security, how these principles interrelate and are typically employed to achieve assured solutions, the mechanisms that may be built from, or due to, these principles.
• Identify which fundamental security design principles are in play, how they interrelate and methods in which they should be applied to develop systems worthy of trust.
• Recognize and explain how failures in fundamental security design principles can lead to system vulnerabilities that can be exploited as part of an offensive cyber operation.
• Identify and explain the various types of vulnerabilities (design and/or implementation weaknesses), their underlying causes, their identifying characteristics, the ways in which they are exploited, and potential mitigation strategies.
• Define and explain how to apply fundamental security design principles during system design, development and implementation to minimize vulnerabilities.
• Characterize how a vulnerability in a given context may be applied to alternative contexts and to adapt vulnerabilities so that lessons from them can be applied to alternative contexts.
• Exercise critical thinking strategies including reasoning, problem solving, analysis and evaluation by:
  • Identifying different threat actors in cyberspace
  • Identifying different motivations of threat actors in cyberspace
  • Recognizing how information system security design, policies, practices and people defend against threats in cyberspace
  • Explain the effects of laws and gaps in legal guidance and precedent with respect to activities in cyberspace.

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CYBV/NETV 388—Cyber Investigations and Forensics

Course Description

CYBV 388 provides students with an understanding of intrusion detection methodologies, tools, and approaches to incident response; an examination of computer forensic principles, including operating system concepts, registry structures, file system concepts, boot process, low level hardware calls, and file operations; and an exploration of the ethical and legal issues attendant to cyber 2 investigations and forensics.

Learning Outcomes

The student will:

• Understand the study of computer forensics as the science of collecting, preserving and analyzing electronic data.
• Identify and apply the techniques used in the collection and analysis of cyber-based evidence.
• Recognize the problems of maintaining a secure technological environment, protecting the privacy and identity of individuals and maintaining confidentiality of information.
• Understand the legal constraints on the collection, documentation, and presentation of evidence from internet cybercrime investigations.
• Demonstrate knowledge of forensics investigation principles and enforcement developments and trends in cyber investigations.
• Exercise critical thinking strategies including reasoning, problem solving, analysis and evaluation by:
  • Utilizing computer forensic technology.
  • Investigating cyber crimes in a simulated environment.
  • Collecting evidence, analyzing data, and presenting findings.

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CYBV 389—OS Theory

Course Description

CYBV 389 provides students a thorough understanding of operating systems theory and implementation. They will be able to understand operating system internals to the level that they could design and implement significant architectural changes to an existing OS. CYBV 389 conforms to the National Security Agency (NSA) Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations (CAE-CO) academic requirements for understanding the inner workings of operating systems.

Learning Outcomes

The student will:

• Recognize and describe the fundamentals of privileged vs. non-privileged states; and the transitions between them.
• Define and explain concurrency and synchronization.
• Characterize and differentiate processes and threads, process/thread management, synchronization, inter-process communications.
• Describe and explain memory management, virtual memory, hierarchical memory schemes.
• Identify and evaluate the differences between uni-processor and multi-processor interfaces and support.
• Define and explain I/O buffering, queuing, sharing and management.
• Exercise critical thinking strategies including reasoning, problem solving, analysis and evaluation by:
  • Identifying different distributed Operating System issues.
  • Identify and evaluate types of operating systems, describe operative system functions, architectures, and tasks.

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CYBV 400—Active Cyber Defense

Course Description

CYBV 400 will provide students with an introduction to the policies, techniques and operational capabilities and limitations of implementing an Active Cyber Defense program. A broad survey of development of defensible network architectures; integration of passive defensive technologies; consumption and production of Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) products; implementation of Network Security Monitoring (NSM) and Hunt Teaming (HT) operations; employment of Incident Response (IR) plans; and Threat and Environment Manipulation techniques (TEM) will be presented, and students will use hands-on labs to practice and implement active defense methodologies. CYBV 400 conforms to the National Security Agency (NSA) Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations (CAE-CO) academic requirements for Cyber Defenses.

Learning Outcomes

The student will:

• Describe the technologies and methods utilized to actively defend systems and networks.
• Describe, evaluate, and operate a defensive network architecture employing multiple layers of protection using technologies appropriate to meet mission security goals.
• Explain how to consume and create Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) within an Active Cyber Defense program.
• Describe and demonstrate how to conduct Network Security Monitoring (NSM) and Hunt Team operations.
• Demonstrate and explain the preparation, identification, containment, eradication, recovery and lessons learned incident response cycle.
• Identify and explain how environment and threat manipulation techniques can mitigate security vulnerabilities.

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CYBV/NETV 435—Cyber Threat Intelligence

Course Description

NETV 435 leads students in an investigation of threat actors and the techniques they employ to attack networks. Students will research threat capabilities and objectives. Formal ethical hacking methodology including reconnaissance, scanning and enumeration, gaining access, escalation of privilege, maintain access and reporting is examined. Prerequisites: NETV 371 or Consent of Instructor

Learning Outcomes

The student will:

• o Explain the relationship between a threat’s objectives and their motivation, access, and capabilities.
• o Identify how threat actors conduct activities in cyberspace to attain their objectives.
• o Identify sources of information about threats to an organization.
• Define and explain I/O buffering, queuing, sharing and management.
• Exercise critical thinking strategies including reasoning, problem solving, analysis and evaluation by:
  • Explaining how vulnerabilities in information systems are discovered.
  • Recognizing how knowledge of network operations helps identify unauthorized network activity.
  • Explaining how cyber intelligence and penetration testing can be mutually supporting.
  • Explaining how cyber intelligence and digital forensics collection and analysis can be mutually supporting.
  • Applying cyber intelligence to make recommendations for changes to information system security design, implementation, policies, and practices.

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CYBV 454—Malware Threats & Analysis

Course Description

CYBV/INFV 454 provides students a methodology to safely perform static and dynamic analysis of software of potentially unknown origin, including obfuscated malware, to fully understand the software's functionality and specifications. Students will use hands-on labs and exercises to examine the fundamental principles of malware analysis and software reverse engineering. C¬YBV/INFV 454 conforms to the National Security Agency (NSA) Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations (CAE-CO) academic requirements for software reverse engineering.

Learning Outcomes

The student will:

• Identify and explain the basic techniques used in static analysis.
• Define and describe how to analyze malware within virtual machines.
• Identify and explain the basic techniques used in dynamic analysis.
• Describe the processes used to disassemble x86 code.
• Recognize C code constructs in Assembly.
• Define and explain how to analyze malicious Windows programs.
• Explain the principles of debugging.
• Exercise critical thinking strategies including reasoning, problem solving, analysis and evaluation by:
  • Debugging kernel level code with WinDbg
  • Identifying and differentiating between different types of malware behavior
  • Enumerating the process malware uses to covertly launch
  • Demonstrating how different encoding schemes are used to obfuscate code
  • Analyzing network signatures associated with malware

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INFV 470—C Programming for Security Professionals

Course Description

INFV 470 provides students with an introduction to C programming. Students will use hands-on labs and exercises to practice and implement applications developed in the C programming language. INFV 470 conforms to the National Security Agency (NSA) Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations (CAE-CO) academic requirements for low-level programming.

Learning Outcomes

The student will:

• Be able to develop programs that can be embedded into an OS kernel, with the required complexity and sophistication to implement exploits or patches for discovered vulnerabilities.
• Define and explain variables, control structures, and functions.
• Define and explain data types and dynamic memory allocation.
• Identify and describe networking concepts and layered protocol architectures.
• Characterize and differentiate elementary and advanced sockets and socket programming.
• Define and explain basic and advanced I/O functions.
• Exercise critical thinking strategies including reasoning, problem solving, analysis and evaluation by:
  • Applying the fundamentals of C programing to develop a functional program that implements a network stack to manage network communications.

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CYBV/INFV 471—Assembly Programming for Security Professionals

Course Description

CYBV/INFV 471 will provide students with an introduction to assembly language programming. Students will use hands-on labs and exercises to practice and implement applications developed in the x86-64 Assembly programming language. CYBV/INFV 471 conforms to the National Security Agency (NSA) Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations (CAE-CO) academic requirements for low-level programming.

Learning Outcomes

The student will:

• Be able to develop programs that can be embedded into an OS kernel, with the required complexity and sophistication to implement exploits or patches for discovered vulnerabilities.
• Define and explain binary, hexadecimal, integers and floating point numbers.
• Define and explain memory, memory mapping and the functions and uses of registers.
• Identify and describe assembly programming math and bit operations.
• Recognize the fundamentals behind branching & looping as well as functions.
• Characterize and differentiate 32 bit and 64 bit system calls in Linux and OS X.
• Define and explain C stream I/O.
• Identify and describe data structures.
• Exercise critical thinking strategies including reasoning, problem solving, analysis and evaluation by:
  • Applying the fundamentals of assembly programing to create a functional, stand-alone assembly language program implementing a basic telnet client with no help from external libraries.

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CYBV/INFV 472—Secure Software Development & Assessment

Course Description

CYBV 472 will provide students with an introduction to the secure software development process as well as how to conduct a software security analysis to detect the presence of weaknesses that may lead to exploitable vulnerabilities in operational systems. Students will learn how to write, analyze, and test secure software that maintains Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability. CYBV 472 conforms to the National Security Agency (NSA) Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations (CAE-CO) academic requirements for Secure Software Development and Software Security Analysis.

Learning Outcomes

The student will:

• Demonstrate that they understand the techniques specifying program behavior, the classes of well-known defects, how they manifest themselves in various languages.
• Identify and describe how poor coding affects security and can identify common coding errors.
• Demonstrate that they are capable of authoring programs that are free from defects and can document their code with clear and succinct explanations, so other professionals can enhance and maintain the developed code.
• Be capable of analyzing existing source code for functional correctness.
• Be capable of applying industry standard tools that analyze software for security vulnerabilities.
• Be capable of building test cases that demonstrate the existence of vulnerabilities.

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CYBV/NETV 479—Wireless Networking & Security

Course Description

CYBV/NETV 479 provides students an introduction to wireless networking, mobile device hardware and software architectures as well as the application of security fundamentals for mobile computing systems. Students will be able to describe user associations and routing in a cellular/mobile network, interaction of elements within the cellular/mobile core, and end-to-end delivery of a packet and/or signal and what happens with the hand-off at each step along the communications path. They will be able to explain differences in core architecture between different generations of cellular and mobile network technologies. CYBV/NETV 479 conforms to the National Security Agency (NSA) Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations (CAE-CO) academic requirements for cellular and mobile technologies and wireless security.

Learning Outcomes

The student will:

• Recognize and explain the differences between each of the generations of cellular and mobile network architectures.
• Define and explain the user association and routing within a cellular network.
• Identify and evaluate the interaction between the different elements within a cellular/mobile network.
• Define and explain the end-to-end delivery of a packet and/or signal and what happens with the hand-off at each step along the communications path.
• Identify and describe the different types of mobile identifiers, what they represent and how they are used to support mobile networking.
• Identify and describe the migration path from 2G to UMTS and the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), UMTS services, and the UMTS air interface.
• Define and explain the Signaling System-7 (SS-7)/Common Channel Signaling (CC7) protocol, the three basic types of network nodes, and the SS-7/CC7 and IPbased SS-7 (SIGTRAN) protocol stacks.
• Describe the elements of 3G WCDMA, 3G CDMA2000 network architecture and the five (5) main elements of the 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) network architecture.
• Identify and describe the Location Based Services (LBS) architectures.
• Define and explain the various mobile encryption standards.
• Identify and discuss the 802.11 network architecture.
• Describe & discuss the hardware architectures and embedded security protections of modern 3G/4G smartphones.
• Identify & discuss security vulnerabilities in smartphone hardware architectures and the iOS and Android mobile OS architectures.
• Exercise critical thinking strategies including reasoning, problem solving, analysis and evaluation by identifying and recognizing potential security vulnerabilities within cellular and mobile network, hardware and software architectures.
• Describe and demonstrate the vulnerabilities with ineffective mechanisms for securing or hiding 802.11 traffic.
• Describe, and implement a secure wireless network that uses modern encryption and enforces the proper authentication of users.

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CYBV 480—Cyber Warfare

Course Description

CYBV 480 will provide students with an introduction to cyber warfare along with its policy, doctrine, and operational constraints. A broad survey of cyber tools, techniques and procedures will be presented, and students will use hands-on labs to practice and implement attack and defense methodologies. CYBV 480 conforms to the National Security Agency (NSA) Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations (CAECO) academic requirements for Offensive and Defensive Cyber Operations.

Learning Outcomes

The student will:

• Understand the phases of offensive cyber operations, what each phase entails, who has authorities to conduct each phase, and how operations are assessed after completion.
• Apply the legal, ethical and policy issues associated with Cyber Operations.
• Describe and demonstrate how to plan, conduct, and defend against automated and web-based reconnaissance.
• Explain and demonstrate how to extract metadata from files and how to defend against metadata reconnaissance.
• Identify and describe network scanning methodology, including the types of network scans and practical scanning considerations.
• Describe and demonstrate how to perform vulnerability scanning.
• Identify and describe the Metasploit framework including its Interfaces, Modules, and Exploit Creation tools.
• Describe and demonstrate how to gain and leverage shell access to identify and obtain important data from the victim machine.
• Identify and describe the different types of password attacks, their strengths and weaknesses and when each is most effective.
• Identify & discuss the similarities and differences between reflected and stored XSS attacks.
• Describe the characteristics and operation of a command injection attack.
• Demonstrate how a command injection attack is used to gain shell access on a victim machine.
• Identify & describe the different types of SQL injection attacks.