Schedule - CMSC414: Computer and Network Security

Classroom: IRB 0318 Class hours: Tuesday and Thursday, 2:00pm - 3:15pm

Instructor: Yizheng Chen Email: yzchen@umd.edu Office Hours: Thursday 1pm - 2pm, Zoom

TA: Daniel Kiely Email: dmkiely@umd.edu Office Hours: Monday 12pm - 2pm, Zoom

TA: Mia Yi Email: yi12@umd.edu Office Hours: Tuesday 11am - 1pm, Zoom

TA: Steven Shen Email: stevencs@umd.edu Office Hours: Wednesday 2pm - 4pm, Zoom

TA: Sarah Bransky Email: sbransky@umd.edu Office Hours: Friday 11am - 1pm, Zoom

All office hour Zoom links are on ELMS here.

Lectures

Weekday Date Lecture Project and Notes
Tuesday 01/27/2026 Campus Closed ❄️ Project 1 Released
Software Security
Thursday 01/29/2026 Campus Closed ❄️
Tuesday 02/03/2026 Introduction &
Memory Layout and Buffer Overflows
Thursday 02/05/2026 Memory Safety Vulnerabilities
Tuesday 02/10/2026 Mitigating Memory Safety Vulnerabilities
Thursday 02/12/2026 Introduction to Web and SQL Injection Project 2 Released
Tuesday 02/17/2026 Cookies and CSRF
Thursday 02/19/2026 JavaScript, Same Origin Policy, XSS Project 1 Due
Tuesday 02/24/2026 UI Attacks, CAPTCHAS, Security Principles
Thursday 02/26/2026 Malware Project 2 Due
Tuesday 03/03/2026 Program Analysis for Security
Thursday 03/05/2026 Midterm 1 Recap
Tuesday 03/10/2026 Midterm 1 Covers 02/03-03/05 lectures
Cryptography
Thursday 03/12/2026 Intro to Cryptography, One-Time Pads and Block Ciphers Project 3 Released
Tuesday 03/17/2026 Spring Break
Thursday 03/19/2026 Spring Break
Tuesday 03/24/2026 Block Cipher Chaining Modes & Cryptographic Hashes
Thursday 03/26/2026 MACs, PRNGs and Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange
Tuesday 03/31/2026 Public-Key Cryptography, Certificates, Passwords
Thursday 04/02/2026 How Crypto Fails in Practice Project 3 Due. Deadline for forming Project 4 Groups. Project 4 Released
Tuesday 04/07/2026 Midterm 2 Recap
Thursday 04/09/2026 Midterm 2 Covers 03/12-04/07 lectures
Network Security
Tuesday 04/14/2026 Networking Background
Thursday 04/16/2026 Low-Level Network Attacks
Tuesday 04/21/2026 Transport Layer, TCP, UDP
Thursday 04/23/2026 DNS and DNSSEC Project 4 Build-it Due
Tuesday 04/28/2026 Denial of Service and Firewalls
Thursday 04/30/2026 Underground Economies
Tuesday 05/05/2026 Introduction to AI Security
Thursday 05/07/2026 Final Review Project 4 Break-it Due
Thursday 05/14/2026 Final Exam: 10:30 am to 12:30 pm Covers the entire semester