Midterm Preparation

Topics to study:

• Concepts and principles
  • What are important questions to be considered when performing threat modeling?
  • How does risk assessment relate to threat modeling?
  • What are the components of DREAD?
• Crytographic building blocks
  • What is the difference between information-theoretic security and computational security?
  • What are the different types of attacks that can be made on a cipher?
  • Why does symmetric encryption use block ciphers?
  • How can two peopele use basic challenge-response to prove ownership of a shared symmetric key?
  • How does hybrid encryption work? Explain what each party exchanges using cryptographic notation.
  • How do digital signatures work? Explain what each party exchanges using crytographic notation.
  • How does Diffie-Hellman establishe a shared key between two people?
  • Explain the properties of a cryptographic hash function.
  • Explain what an HMAC does. Use cryptographic notation to show what one party would send to another when using an HMAC.
• User authentication
  • Explain how salting and hashing of passwords works, including what is stored in a password database.
  • What are the current NIST recommendations for password composition policies? Why have they made these recommendations?
  • Explain how entropy applies to passwords and why it may not accurately reflect how people choose passwords.
  • Explain the basics of how a federated identity system works.
  • How does a one-time password generator work? How does a TOTP generator work?
  • Why would a company or a user want to use two-factor authentication?
• Access control
  • Describe the basics of how an operating system provides memory protection for processes.
  • Explain how ugo file permissions work in Linux.
  • Explain the purpose of the setuid bit in Linux and how it works.
  • How is Role-Based Access Control different from file-based access control? What are its advantages?
• Software security
  • Give an example of a TOCTOU race condition.
  • Give an example of how an integer-based vulnerability.
  • Explain how a basic buffer overflow vulnerability works.
  • Explain how a heap-spraying attack works.
  • How does a canary defend against a stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability?
  • How does ASLR defend against a stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability?
• Malicious software
  • What is the difference between a virus and a worm?
  • Give an example of a strategy an anti-virus program could use to detect malware. Give an example of a counter-attack a virus could use to defeat this detection measure.
  • Given Figure 7.5 from the book, explain how inline hooking works.
  • What is a botnet? Give an example of how an attacker can hide its command and control infrastructure from legal authorities.