CS 771 - Web Application Security

The course provides enough background and theory for students to understand and address the vulnerabilities of Web applications. To understand Web application security, it is first necessary to understand how to exploit Web application vulnerabilities. The main focus of the course is, therefore, to learn the tasks and techniques needed to break into Web applications by exploiting those vulnerabilities. This course will teach students, in a very practical way, how to discover, exploit and prevent security flaws in today’s Web applications. The main challenge is that Web applications are written using a variety of languages: HTML, CSS and JavaScript on the client, and Java or PHP on the server. This course will explain language-specific vulnerabilities on both the client and the server side. The course will also show students how hackers steal sensitive data and perform unauthorized actions. Students will be shown numerous real-world examples, demonstrating how different kinds of security flaws manifest themselves in today’s Web applications. The course will also describe in detail the countermeasures that application developers can take to defeat attackers.
Lecture
Credits: 3
Prerequisites: CS 615 and CS 768
Offered in Spring Semester, Alternate Years