CSEC769: Emerging Topics in Wireless Security (Graduate course, Fall 2021)

Course Description
This inter-disciplinary course focuses on vulnerabilities, attacks, and mitigation techniques in current and emerging wireless systems and protocols. The goal is to advance students' understanding of modern wireless systems while providing an insight into state-of-the-art wireless security research trends. The course covers a primer on wireless communications and introduces prominent wireless systems and their security protocols. Along with reviewing research approaches in wireless security, students study and discuss several recent papers on current topics and further practice the steps of a research process by completing a project, from critically reviewing the literature to evaluating a novel idea on a hardware (or SDR) testbed, and finally presenting their findings.

Topics

• Introduction to Wireless Security and Common Research Approaches
• Basics of Wireless Communication Systems
• Physical-Layer Security (Including Adversarial/Friendly Jamming)
• Wi-Fi Security (WPA2, WPA3, and Beyond)
• Cellular Network (4G/5G) Security
• Security of Wireless Protocols for IoT
• V2V Communications Security
• Other Selected/Trending Topics

Prerequisite: CSEC-600 or EEEE-593 or EEEE-693 or permission of the instructor.

Grading

• Class participation: 12%
• Presentations (3): 24%
• Quizzes and debates: 43%
• Team research project: 21%

CSEC469: Wireless Security (Undergraduate course, Spring 2018—21)

Course Description
This introductory course is designed to provide the students with an understanding of the concepts and principles of wireless communications and networks along with their vulnerabilities and security protocols. In addition, the students will gain practical experience via a series of attack/defense lab activities, and a software-defined radio (SDR) project to explore mechanisms for analyzing and/or securing modern wireless networks.

Topics

• Introduction to Wireless Security
• Basics of Wireless Communications and PHY-layer Security
• Software-Defined Radio
• Wi-Fi Security Protocols: WEP, WPA2 and WPA3
• Cellular Network Security (from 2G to 5G)
• Security of Wireless Protocols for IoT (Bluetooth & ZigBee)
• Connected Vehicle Security
• Satellite Communications/GPS Security

Labs (in Networking Security Lab GOL-2780)

• MATLAB for Signal Processng
• Software-Defined Radio
• Wireless LAN Setup
• Bypassing (WEP) Authentications
• Cracking WEP and WPA2-PSK
• Setting up RADIUS for Enterprise Authentication
• KRACKs against WPA2
• Inspecting Cellular Networks Traffic
• Connected Vehicle Security Testbed

SDR Projects

• 4G/LTE Security (IMSI Catchers)
• ZigBee Traffic Security
• MitM Attacks in Wi-Fi
• GPS Spoofing

Previous Courses

• Seminar on Advanced Topics in Wireless Security (Fall 2018—20) — Rochester Institute of Technology, NY
• Computer Networks Laboratory (Spring 2010) — Amirkabir University of Technology, Iran
• Invited Speaker (as a PhD Student) — The University of Arizona, AZ
• ECE678: Wireless Protocols, PHY-layer security and ZigZag decoding, Spring 2016
• ECE564: Advanced Topics in Computer Networks, TCP in wireless and CSIM, Fall 2014
• ECE678: Wireless Protocols, Routing in CRNs and ZigZag decoding, Spring 2013
• Co-Instructor — Amirkabir University of Technology, Iran
• Mobile & Wireless Networks (graduate course), Fall 2009
• Multimedia Networks (graduate course), Spring 2009 & 2010
• Wireless Sensor Networks (graduate course), Fall 2008