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Tel Aviv University

Unlocking Information Security I: From Cryptography to Buffer Overflows

Tel Aviv University and Campus - the Israeli National Project for Digital Learning via edX

Overview

Information Security is everywhere: as the world becomes more and more digitized, so it becomes more and more hackable. Cyber attacks, data breaches, and even cyber warfare are all very real - so it is infinitely important to understand how hackers think and act, and how you can fight back.

In this course, which is the first part of the Unlocking Information Security program, you will learn the basic terminology and concepts in the field of information security. You will explore different types of vulnerabilities through famous examples of design flaws, implementation bugs and social engineering.

You will then move on to discover the art of cryptography, from ancient times to the modern era, and learn about famous ciphers, how they can be cracked, and what can be done to thwart such attacks. Next, you will learn about an important aspect of cryptography that involves no secrets at all: hash functions. You will understand what they are, how they can be used, and how they can be attacked.

You will then combine everything you've learned and take a critical view of different authentication schemes: passwords, challenge-response systems and biometrics. Finally, you will learn about the most critical vulnerability of all times - Buffer Overflow.

This course was produced at Tel Aviv University by TAU Online - learning innovation center.

Taught by

Avishai Wool and Dan Gittik

Reviews

4.7 rating, based on 322 Class Central reviews

Start your review of Unlocking Information Security I: From Cryptography to Buffer Overflows

  • Profile image for Raphael Freitas
    Raphael Freitas
    This couse changed my life. I took it and, with enormous difficult, I saw that I needed to learn programming. So I took a set of courses about programming and I came back to take the part two. The two professors, Avishai Wool and Dan Gittik, are incredible, fantastic, I have no words to describe them... but in Portuguese I have: Eles são excepcionais, extraordinariamente competentes! All the texts, the explanations, the images, animated gifs, the didatics, the manner of conducting our thoughts to understand the subjects! I just have to thank you for the opportunity to learn from this course. Course not, masterpiece!
  • Anonymous
    This course is amazing! First of all - the content is great, clear and profound, making complicated issues accessible and understandable. Furthermore, the lecturers are great, they are real experts and yet they seem approachable. The effort and thought that were put into this course really make it stand out, the explanations, the animations, I took many online courses before and none of them was as good as this one.
  • Anonymous
    חומר מעניין מועבר טוב
    מבין את הרצון לפנות לדוברי שפות זרות אבל כדובר עברית חבל שאין את החומר הכתוב והמבחנים גם בעברית.

    למרות שנהניתי לעשות את ההאקסרסייזים - וויתרתי עליהם לגמרי לאחר שיותר מדי פעמים נתקלתי בהוראות חסרות ומטעות שגרמו לתסכול ולחוסר יכולת להגיע להישגים או סתם לגרום לא לקבל אישור על התכנות (למרות שעובד לפי כל הבחינות) רק בגלל שמשהו בממשק בינו לבין התוכנה הבודקת לא שלם.
    כמו כן התשובה שקיבלתי מהתומך הטעני הייתה מתנשאת ומבאסת וגרמה לי לעזוב את ההקורס למשך שנה שלמה. אולי עכשיו, כשהחלטתי לא לעשות את התרגילים בתכנות בגלל הפגמים שלהם, אסיים את הקורס - שכמו שאמרתי בהתחלה - קורס מרתק.
  • Anonymous
    very good course allowing hands on experience, thus requiring more understanding then expected. some hackxercises require familiarity with specific functions in python, which for me as a JAVA developer, turned out to be challenging to find. in this cases, the specific funcions should be in the question description and not in the hint (if at all...)
  • Anonymous
    The moment the thought of cyber security came to my mind it was Israel that occupied my mind.Consequently I decided to take this course by TAU at EdX.The lucid explanation and effective teaching style of both the educators are worth mentioning.I was deeply impressed by the manner of teaching.Hope the journey continues.
  • Anonymous
    Just perfect.
    Easy to understand, light, fun, coll cours.
    Helps tou to get to know the basics of digital defences.
  • Profile image for Tomgi859
    Tomgi859
    One of the mose awesome, friendly, understandable, and definitely the one with the most efforts invested in I've even ran into in my life! Super-friendly course, which require familarity with Python, which I had not a all in the beginning, but with…
  • Anonymous
    This couse changed my life. I took it and, with enormous difficult, I saw that I needed to learn programming. So I took a set of courses about programming and I came back to take the part two. The two professors, Avishai Wool and Dan Gittik, are incredible, fantastic, I have no words to describe them... but in Portuguese I have: Eles são excepcionais, extraordinariamente competentes! All the texts, the explanations, the images, animated gifs, the didatics, the manner of conducting our thoughts to understand the subjects! I just have to thank you for the opportunity to learn from this course. Course not, masterpiece!
  • Great mix of concepts, illustrations, and practices, including relevant and useful quizzes and programming assignments! The informal and humorous approach makes the course very engaging and motivating! I highly recommend it!
  • Anonymous
    A very good course. Who want to iniciate or understand what are already doing, it's so great!!

    The teachers are great, the subjects are presented with accuracy and transparency. I strongly recommend this wonderful course!
  • Anonymous
    קורס מעולה, מלמד אותך המון, מסביר טוב, רחב. פשוט מעולה.
    ממליץ ממש על לימוד הקורס בין אם אתם לא יודעים כלום על סייבר והגנה ובין אם אתם מבינים בנושא.
    אין חובה בידע קודם
  • Anonymous
    Can I buffer overflow this review? This is a nice course. First, there's no such a complete course of hacking and defending on the internet, all I saw was just "go to CTF!, Do more quiz!" But this one told us step by step, with small tests that were a little harder than the class, motivating us to think and understand it. Second, the presenter, no matter the "young" and "old" one's humorous speech telling skills (and also gifs) are wonderful! Last but not least, the "Hackxercise", all I can say is just go and experience in person.

    Thanks to all of the Staff, from the planner to those who made awesome animation.
  • Anonymous
    This course is very good, I recommend it to everyone who wants to know what Ciphers, Hash Functions, Buffer overflow and some famous examples of each one of them are. In addition to examples, there are excellent indications of complementary materials for those who wish to delve deeper into the subject.
  • Anonymous
    The course is very interesting, and its great that it combines videos, reading, theoretical excercies as well as practic excercises (the hacxercises).

    In my opinion, the instructions in many excercises were not clear enough. For example, I was not sure if he input is a string/the 0x format/binary integer/binary list/, how should I return the output, how to use AES algorithm, etc.
    I think additional explanations could make the excercises clearer, without making them less challenching :)

    Also, I wanted to say its realy good that the course is divided to chapters. It helps to progress in a rate that is possible for me, since I don't have much free time as a soldier

    Thank you!!
  • Anonymous
    Dears, students and docents .

    This course is more an introductory course than intermediate, if you have some prior undergraduate knowledge you might learn very few new things ...

    You can find almost all by searching on wikipedia, and trolling by your favorite space around the corner ...

    If you're a pentester or black hat, that tries to pwn things, this wont help ...

    Kind Regards,
    JP xor John Philippe
  • Anonymous
    Thank you Prof. Avishai Wool and Dan Gitik for an AWESOME course!
    Information Security just got a whole lot cooler than it already was.
    Loving the examples and graphics (still trying to decide if I'm "Team Eve" or "Team Malory"...)
  • Anonymous
    While I feel this was a great course, I was out of my depth for most of it where coding and mathematical equations were discussed. The syllabus or course description would have benefited that some coding or python experience would be advantageous.
  • Anonymous
    Great course! You really made it there in Tel Aviv Univeristy, providing us with this cool and helpful course. I finished part I, and learned a lot about ciphers, encryption and applications' vulnerabilities in general.
  • Anonymous
    Great Pace and Difficulty. Very motivation presentation of content. SOme programming exercises could be better explained in Terms of what is wanted. But else I am very excited for the next course!
  • Anonymous
    All the contents a well exposed and explained. Exercises are completely in the high level of this course. Only with the codeboard I had the bad experience that I'm only anonymous user.

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