Computer course offers cyber security
With thousands of successful virus attacks and millions of dollars lost in identity theft each year, learning how to secure a computer is becoming as important as protecting personal belongings.
In response to this growing problem, Chad Mano, computer science professor, is offering a cyber security course, dedicated to instructing students on how to protect their expensive computer investments and the information stored on the machines.
“Security reaches everybody nowadays, it’s not just the computer geek problem,” Mano said. “It’s your parents, and your friends and neighbors.”
The course, offered Spring 2009, marks only the second time the course has been taught and Mano said it will be offered each spring. Taught MWF from 10:30 to 11:20 a.m., the course fulfills a physical breadth requirement.
Mano said while the name may imply a complex understanding of computers, the course is not designed for computer science majors, rather for the average student. In the first offering of the course in Spring 2008, Mano said few CS students took the course, with the majority of students coming from different majors and he said they handled the course just fine.
“It’s really designed for anybody,” Mano said. “I don’t know if we have anybody on campus who can’t do e-mail and Web browsing. If you can do that, this class is for you.”
The course will cover topics of protecting computers against viruses and worms, phishing attacks, identity theft, privacy and encryption. Besides learning about the various types of attacks, Mano said students will also learn how an attack works and what makes attacks possible due to networking, computer design and common errors.
Mano said the biggest computer security problem students on campus face is phishing attacks from spam e-mail.
A phishing attack is executed by luring an individual to a fake site that poses as a real one in order to gather confidential information. For instance, Mano said an attacker could send a spam e-mail claiming to be from eBay. When the user clicks on the link, it takes them to a site that looks nearly identical to eBay and asks for the user name and password. Once the user types that information in, it is sent to the attacker and the attacker can then use that information for malicious purposes.
While this type of attack is easy to protect against, Mano said many people lack the knowledge to avoid falling prey to this attack that is the gateway to so much identity theft.
Mano said viruses and worms are also a problem, though they don’t need to be if people will install and correctly use anti-virus software.
One of the assignments Mano had students do the first time the course was offered was to snoop around computer labs on campus and see what information they could find that other students unknowingly left available.
Mano said computer labs do not protect private information due to the way Web browsers operate, in that they store information in cookies and caches. This means that even though a user logs out of e-mail or their bank account, some of their information can still be viewed if someone were to browse through the cache, which stores viewed data for efficiency purposes.
“The first thing to remember is computers can remember everything and they’ll spill their guts to anyone who asks,” Mano said.
Students can protect themselves at labs by making sure they log out of e-mail or other secure sites, clear the cache, delete cookies and by not allowing the computer to save and remember passwords, Mano said.
New to the course this year, Mano said he will discuss the dangers of social networking and blogging more in-depth. While the risks to overall computer security aren’t as high as viruses, Mano said the issue at stake with social networks and blogs is privacy.
He said many prospective employers look at social networking sites to view applicants.
“If you’re hiring someone, it’s a big financial investment to train them,” Mano said. “So employers really want to know what they’re getting. If they can just Google your name and a picture with your name drunk at a party shows up, that’s really going to hurt you against someone that, even if they do the same stuff, they’re not putting it up there for the world to find out.”
Mano said the course is targeted at freshmen to help them through their college career but will be beneficial to all other students as well.
Registration for the class is still open.
–seth.h@aggiemail.usu.edu