Computer Science

This course discusses various programming language concepts, as well as design and implementation topics for several language families. Topics include introduction languages and grammars; recursive descent parsing; data types, expressions, control structures, and parameter passing; compilers and interpreters; memory management; functional programming principles. Students completing this course should be able to quickly learn to effectively use new computer programming languages. In particular, students should be able to evaluate programming language features and designs, solve problems using the functional, object-oriented, and declarative paradigms, describe the strengths and limitations of the imperative, functional and object oriented paradigms for solving different kinds of problems (or in different application domains), explain and answer questions about specific languages that illustrate different paradigms, including questions about relevant concepts and major features, and design, define, and evaluate parts of programming languages or similar systems and justify their design decisions.

This course focuses on the object-oriented approach for analysis and design of software projects. It is an applied analysis and design class, addressing the use of object-oriented techniques. This course covers domain modeling, use cases, architectural design, and modeling notations, system design, object design, mapping models to code, testing and configuration management. Students will work in small teams, each team having the responsibility for analysis, design and implementation of a software system.

This course introduces security testing to those who are new to the field. This course is intended for novices who have a thorough grounding in computer and networking basics but want to learn how to protect networks by using an attacker’s knowledge to compromise network security. By understanding what tools and methods a hacker uses to break into a network, security testers can protect systems from these attacks.

Both public and private companies rely on skilled professionals to conduct test attacks on their networks as a way to discover vulnerabilities before attackers do. “Ethical hacker” is one term used to describe these professionals; others are “security tester” or “penetration tester.”

This course is the capstone course for all students in the Cybersecurity track of MS in CS which provides the student with a hands-on environment to test and apply knowledge and skills learned throughout the program. The student will be required to critically think through real-world scenarios and recognize the value of cyber security methodologies.

This course explores the issues of computer ethics on the level of the professional computer scientist. It encourages the student's development of skills in ethical analysis through the use of methodologies such as
exploration of research articles, interactive dialog, case study analysis, and the comparison and contrasting of actual codes of ethics within the profession. Topics include: review of computer crime and computer security vis a vis hardware, software, networking, telecommunications, and database management; computer hacking and the intrusion of viruses/malware/etc.; software theft and intellectual property rights; invasion of privacy on the Internet and at the workplace; software engineering ethics and professional practices; informatics and professional responsibility; computer ethics and computer law; computer and information system failures as an ethical issue; impact of artificial intelligence and expert systems.

The Graduate Computer Science (CS) Internship provides the student with a professional work experience in an organizational environment. The internship is an extension of the curriculum and provides meaningful experience related to the student's area of concentration. The internship responsibilities must be approved in advance by a faculty member of the CS department. The student is supervised within the work setting and also by a faculty advisor from the department of Computer Science. 

Graduate Internship 1-3 credits (elective course)

Prerequisites: the student must be in the current MS in CS program.

This course introduces students to the principal activities and state-of-the-art techniques involved in developing digital forensics systems. Topics covered may include advanced file carving and reconstruction, forensic analysis of modern filesystems, network forensics, mobile device forensics, memory forensics, and anti-forensics. This course provides an advanced digital forensic topic relating to malicious software (malware), which represents an increasing information security threat to computer systems and networks. This course also introduces students to the application of forensic science principles and practices for collecting, examining, analyzing, and presenting digital evidence. The course includes selected topics from the legal, forensic, and information technology domains and utilizes lectures, assignments, and programming projects to illustrate these topics. We will explore these topics through the use of various open-source forensic tools.

Advanced Penetration Testing is a hands-on course that focuses on attacking and defending highly secured environments such as agencies, financial organizations, federal organizations, and large companies. The Advanced Penetration Testing course teaches the cyber-attack lifecycle from the perspective of an adversary. Advanced Penetration Testing is designed as a logical progression point for those who have completed Penetration Testing or for those with existing penetration testing experience. Students with the prerequisite knowledge to take this course will walk through dozens of real-world attacks used by the most seasoned penetration testers. The methodology of a given attack is discussed, followed by exercises in a hands-on lab to consolidate advanced concepts and facilitate the immediate application of techniques in the workplace. A sample of topics covered includes weaponizing Python for penetration testers, attacks against network access control (NAC) and virtual local area network (VLAN) manipulation, network device exploitation, breaking out of Linux and Windows restricted environments, IPv6, Linux privilege escalation and exploit-writing, testing cryptographic implementations, fuzzing, defeating modern OS controls such as address space layout randomization (ASLR) and data execution prevention (DEP), return-oriented programming (ROP), Windows exploit-writing, and much more!