ISSC342  - Operating Systems: Hardening and Security

This course is a study of the principles and concepts of Network Security from the perspective of the Operating System (OS). It places emphasis on discovering the vulnerabilities of the standard Operating Systems (OS) to attacks and focuses on the methodologies and measures necessary to take a proactive and preventive stance to address security vulnerabilities. Students will examine the principles, practices, and policies related to hardening and securing Operating Systems so they are impervious to security threats. It focuses on the vulnerabilities and the related countermeasures of various Windows 2000 and Windows NT components (Domain structures, domain trusts, security account manager, policies, profiles, file system, IP services (DHCP, DNS, IIS, TCP/IP printing, RPC, RIP for Internet protocol, SNMP), DCOM, Registry, Active Directory, Encrypting File System (EFS), IPSec, and public key certificate services). This course also discusses vulnerabilities and countermeasures related to UNIX (file system, access control, UID, GID, root password, console password, password shadowing, UNIX kernel, IP services, Inetd, TCP wrapper, variants (AIX, IRIX, Solaris, Linux), “r” services, finger services, Telnet, FTP, Gopher, HTTP, and SSL).