Go to JKU Homepage
Institute of Networks and Security
What's that?

Institutes, schools, other departments, and programs create their own web content and menus.

To help you better navigate the site, see here where you are at the moment.

Masterstudium Computer Science.

Master in Computer Science

Based on the undergraduate degree program in Computer Science at JKU, the Master’s degree program is research-oriented and focuses on today’s advancing and evolving technologies.

The protection of IT systems against internal or external attacks is a strategically important task for planning and operating such systems. Industry and economy require more security experts with a profound knowledge in computer science and especially networks. Important aspects in the application of security measures are the systematic configuration and monitoring of IT infra-structures.

Graduates of this specialization area have broad job opportunities ranging from the design, implementation, and administration of security strategies, the administration of systems, networks, and security policies, the application of cryptography as well as knowledge of the legal environment in the security area.

The profound technical education in this area allows a career in research and development alike.

INS-Courses (Master's Degree Program)
 

Students will learn beside formal, mathematical basic concepts, software oriented aspects such as malware as well as the Austrian security handbook. Individual contributions by practitioners will show the range of security issues. 

Lecturer:
Rene Mayrhofer

LVA-Type: VO
LVA-Number: 353.067
Hours per semester: 2
ECTS: 3.00
Course Schedule: weekly
Exam: written exam

Students understand the basic concepts of computer forensics, its technical limitations as well as the related legal issues. They know typical problems and possess knowledge regarding securing evidence as well as extracting, observing resp. reconstructing data from various sources.

Lecturer:
Michael Sonntag

LVA-Type: VO
LVA-Number: 353.068
Hours per semester: 2
ECTS: 3.00
Dates: Weekly
Exam: Written exam

Students understand the buildup of a stable server infrastructure including start of operation and configuration of elementary services. Main aspects are the importance of high availability and the concept of “least privilege”.

Lecturers:
Tobias Höller
Mario Lins

LVA-Type: KV
LVA-Number: 353.054
Hours per semester: 2
ECTS: 3.00
Dates: Weekly
Exam: Schriftliche Klausur

tudents know the areas of application and algorithmic principles of selected protocols, which are required for operating and managing computer networks. They understand fundamental relations and the cooperation/interaction of these protocols. In combination with the experience obtained by the practical work in the network lab when installing and configuring network devices, this know-how provides a good knowledge base to efficiently become acquainted with special problems in the network area.

Lecturer:
Tobias Höller

LVA-Type: KV
LVA-Number: 353.084
Hours per semester: 2
ECTS: 3.00
Dates: Weekly
Exam: Written exam

Students understand the basic functionality and tasks of various network security devices. A main aspect is to emphasize the tradeoff between the required effort and the necessary reductions in convenience to reach a certain security level. , opens an external URL in a new window

Lecturer:
Jan Horacek

LVA-Type: KV
LVA-Number: 353.088
Hours per semester: 1
ECTS: 1.50
Dates: Weekly
Exam: Written exam

Students will acquire an understanding of the different aspects of system level security. The course will cover protection mechanisms for traditional operating systems for an evolving threat landscape. Techniques used by virus and other malware attacks will be analyzed to determine possible protection and prevention mechanisms. This course will also cover security vulnerabilities in systems and applications, and how they can be identified and remediated. Security in non-traditional systems such as SCADA and the growing security threat in mobile systems will also be covered. 

Lecturer:
Mario Lins

LVA-Type: KV
LVA-Number: 353.077
Hours per Semester: 2
ECTS: 3.00
Dates: Weekly
Exam: Written exam

Principles and techniques of secure software development, security risk rankings and taxonomies, I/O handling (canonicalization, validation, sanitization), etc.

Lecturer:
Daniel Dorfmeister

LVA-Type: KV
LVA-Number: 353.064
Hours per semester: 1
ECTS: 1.50
Dates: Block
Exam: Written Exam

Independent and team-oriented work on a project from the area of the Major Subject. 

Lecturers:
Rene Mayrhofer
Michael Sonntag
Stefan Rass

LVA-Type: PR
LVA-Number: 353.093
Hours per semester: 5
ECTS: 7.50
Dates: Block
Exam: The evaluation criteria are specified by the course leader at the beginning of the semester. Usually the course is evaluated by continuous project monitoring as well as by a final presentation and possibly a final written report.

tudents present and discuss the progress of their Master's thesis. They learn to critically reflect on the presentations of other students and to give inputs during discussions.

Lecturers:
Rene Mayrhofer
Michael Sonntag
Stefan Rass

LVA-Type: VO
LVA-Number: 353.094, 353.095
Hours per semester: 2
ECTS: 3.00
Dates: On appointment
Exam: Clarity and elegance of the presentations and demonstrations; progress of the Master's thesis.

Further INS-Courses
(Specialsation)

"Basics and architecture of cloud computing, security issues at the various elements involved when employing cloud services, private & public cloud security, security recommendations for cloud systems, selected basic legal issues of cloud computing, security advantages of the cloud, virtualization security and cryptographic mechanisms."

 

Lecturer:
Stefan Rass, opens an external URL in a new window

LVA-Type: KV
LVA-Number: 353.073
Hours per semester: 2
ECTS: 3.00
Dates: Block
Exam: Exercise Sheet and Student Presentations

Introduction to the basic concepts of the Linux operating system.

Lecturer:
Tobias Höller

LVA-Type: KV
LVA-Number: 353.061
Hours per semester: 1
ECTS: 1.50
Dates: Block
Exam: Written exam.

This course focuses on the omnipresent IEEE 802.11 wireless network protocol which today is inevitable for notebook computers, mobile phones and IoT devices and is normally simply referred to as WLAN or WiFi.

 

Lecturer:
Christian Praher-Köppl

LVA-Type: KV
LVA-Number: 353.029
Hours per semester: 1
ECTS: 1.50
Dates: Block
Exam: Written exam

Special Topics of the INS

This course looks at Android security concepts in terms of those already established in the standard platform as well as new concepts and techniques appearing in the Android ecosystem.

Lecturer:
Rene Mayrhofer

LVA-Type: KV
LVA-Number: 353.030
Hours per semester: 1
ECTS: 1.50
Dates: Block
Exam: Written exam and presentation.

This lecture series is the first of its kind in Austria, with all Austrian CS departments and faculties participating. It will taken place online. See: Public Lecture Series: “Sustainability in Computer Science” — TU Wien Informatics, opens an external URL in a new window

Mode: Submission of a paper on 1-3 topics from the lecture series.

Grading will be based on a seminar paper to be written about 1-3 of the lectures in detail and a short summary of all the lectures in the ring series.

Two lectures may be dropped from the summaries, which should each be about 2-4 sentences describing what you personally took away from that particular lecture as surprising, thought provoking, or simply nice to know.

The detailed analysis of 1 to 3 of the lectures should include additional material on the topics covered in those lectures based on your own (e.g., online) research and should summarize takeaways for what could be changed in IT to make it more sustainable.

The whole seminar paper should be between 3 and 5 pages in ACM double column "sigconf" format.

(https://portalparts.acm.org/hippo/latex_templates/acmart-primary.zip, opens an external URL in a new window  /  https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/publications/word_style/interim-template-style/interim-layout.docx, opens an external URL in a new window).

Lecturer:
Rene Mayrhofer

LVA-Type: KV
LVA-Number: 353.090
Hours per semester: 1
ECTS: 1.50
Dates: Block
Exam: Schriftliche Ausarbeitung

This course is provided through the partnership with the Check Point SecureAcademy. The main focus lies on the administration of the Check Point firewalls. Its content is based on the CCSA exam curriculum. Students practice the topics via various lab exercises in a large virtual environment. Furthermore, the enrolled students are eligible for a discounted certification exam.

Requirements: basic knowledge of operating systems, networking and IT security. This course goes well together with the standard course "Network Security".

Note: Check Point requires the names and email addresses of the enrolled students in order to operate the program (e.g. to provide access to student manuals).

Lecturer:
Jan Horacek

LVA-Type: KV
LVA-Number: 353.019
Hours per Semester: 1
ECTS: 1.50
Dates: Block
Exam: Written Exam

This course starts with a few lectures that give an introduction to software supply chain security and continues with student-prepared presentations from a catalogue of topics. Topic suggestions are welcome.

Each week of presentations will have a theme. The presentations will serve as a starting point for further discussions about supply chain security.
In preparation for each week's theme all students will answer a series of questions via Moodle. The goal of the questions is not to test students knowledge of the topic, but to get students engaged with the topic and have them think critically about it in preparation for the presentations and discussion.

Lecturer:
Martin Schwaighofer

LVA-Type: KV
LVA-Number: 353.086
Hours per semester: 2
ECTS: 3.00
Dates: Block
Exam: Presentation, Moodle questions

Various aspects of cellular mobile radio systems (GSM / UMTS / LTE). In addition to architecture and physical transmission layer, the necessary algorithms for efficient and reliable operation are presented.

Lecturer:
Gerald Ostermayer

LVA-Type: KV
LVA-Number: 353.032
Hours per semester: 1
ECTS: 1.50
Dates: Block
Exam: Written exam.

Practical work accompanying the lecture computer forensics and IT law.

Requirements: Previous or concurrent attendance of the lecture Computer forensics and IT law.

Lecturer:
Michael Sonntag

LVA-Type: KV
LVA-Number: 353.060
Hours per semester: 2
ECTS: 3.00
Dates: Block
Exam: Written exam and presentation

Industrial Penetration Testing with Peter Panholzer, SCADA Security expert und co-founder of Limes Security.

Lecturer:
Peter Panholzer

LVA-Type: KV
LVA-Number: 353.038
Hours per semester: 1
ECTS: 1.50
Dates: Block
 

Basic concepts of NFC, RFID and smart card systems. Understanding of architectures, communication protocols and applications.

Lecturer:
Michael Roland

LVA-Tye: KV
LVA-Number: 353.039
Hours per semester: 1
ECTS: 1.50
Dates: Block
Exam: