CS4930/5930 Privacy and Censorship, Spring 2019

Time: Monday/Wednesday 4:45PM - 6:00PM
Location: ENGR 109
Instructor: Dr. Yanyan Zhuang
Office: ENGR 184
Office Hours: Monday/Wednesday 6:00PM - 6:45PM, or by appointment.

Annoucements

  • 01/20: Welcome! Course website is online!

Course Description

This class will cover two topics: privacy from the perspectives of organizations and individuals, and censorship techniques that censors use to monitor citizen’s Internet use and block unwanted network traffic. You will build your knowledge about privacy and censorship by learning about technologyrelated privacy concerns and mitigation, for example: the different techniques that third parties use to track website visits, privacy risks on smartphones; and the (in)famous ways how censors block Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, or other unwanted Internet access, using techniques such as DNS injection, content filtering, as well as some popular tools that can provide anonymity and censorship circumvention, like Tor. This course is intended primarily for graduate students and advanced undergraduate students (juniors and seniors) with some technical background.

Prerequisites

  • CS2080 (Programming with Unix)

  • Knowledge about UNIX/Linux systems, Operating System, TCP/IP stack, programming language C/Python/Java

  • If you want to take the class without the prerequisite, you have the get the permission from the instructor. If approved, if is your responsibilities to make up for the required background

Textbook

There is no textbook for this class. However, there will be weekly readings about relevant topics from prestigious conferences and journals.