Tentative schedule and Assignments (Autumn 2025)

This schedule is subject to change. Please check back frequently.


Week Date ACTION ITEMS
Tentative Topics Readings and Videos
Remarks






Week 1
23/7

Course Introduction : Logistics
why do we need usable security and privacy
Debate --  Do data privacy matter in AI tech?
Are the policy makers or developers
doing anything about it?


Required reading

--

Additional reading

--

24/7

25/7

Week 2
30/7



  -- see above --

31/7

1/8

Week 3
6/8

Introduction to security, privacy, usability
What  is security;
What is  privacy (including differential privacy);
What is usability;

Why is usability hard?

Required reading

1. "A Summary of Computer Misuse Techniques," by Peter G. Neumann and Donn B. Parker, from the 12th National Computer Security Conference, 1989 (page 396 of this report)

2. Evaluating the Contextual Integrity of Privacy Regulation: Parents' IoT Toy Privacy Norms Versus COPPA, N. Apthorpe, S. Varghese, N. Feamster, USENIX Security Symposium, 2019



Additional reading
3. Chapters 1 and 2 of Usable Security: History, Themes, and Challenges  

7/8

8/8

Week 4
12/8





 

13/8

14/8

Week 5
19/8

What started it all: usable encryption
aka the "Johnny" papers

Traditional techniques to measure usability of
secure/private systems

Research questions, surveys, interviews,
focus Groups,  diary Studies,
How to create questions

Biases/confounds to avoid while designing studies

 


Required reading
1. Why Johnny Can't Encrypt: A Usability Evaluation of PGP 5.0., A. Whitten and J.D. Tygar. Proceedings of USENIX Security 1999.

2. A Summary of Survey Methodology Best Practices
for Security and Privacy Researchers
, E. Redmilles, Y. Acar, S. Fahl and M. Mazurek, Tech report, UMD

3.  The Emperor's New Security Indicators: An evaluation of website authentication and the effect of role playing on usability studies, Schechter et al. , IEEE S&P'07

Additional reading

4. Likert scale examples,
Source: Vagias, Wade M. (2006). "Likert-type scale response anchors." Clemson International Institute for Tourism & Research Development, Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management. Clemson University 

20/8

21/8

Week 6
26/8





-- see above

27/8

29/8

Week 7
2/9

Techniques of analyzing qualitative data
Coding techniques
inter-coder reliability



Required reading
1. "So-called privacy breeds evil" Narrative Justifications for Intimate Partner Surveillance in Online Forums, Bellini et al.

2. Digital technologies and intimate partner violence: A qualitative analysis with multiple stakeholders, Freed et al. 

3/9

4/9








Week 8
9/9


Analyzing quantitative
data with statistics
Introduction to statistics
Hypothesis testing
Case study: Longitudinal data management in cloud storage





Required reading
1. Basic Statistical Test Flow Chart
2. Choosing the correct statistical test made easy
3. Forgotten But Not Gone: Identifying the Need for
Longitudinal Data Management in Cloud Storage
, Khan et al., CHI 2018
4. Rethinking Connection Security Indicators, Felt et al., SOUPS'16
5. De-mystifying statistics (You can skip the data visualization, use R )


Additional reading
6. A Painless guide to Statistics (READ IT CAREFULLY)

7. Current Topics in Media Computing and HCI (Another introduction to hypothesis testing). RWTH Aachen.

10/9

11/9








Week 9




Designing ethical experiments

Case study: Social Engineering and Phishing attacks

Required reading
1. The Menlo Report, Ethical Principles Guiding Information and
Communication Technology Research
, August 2012

2. Social Phising, Jagatic et al., CACM'05

3.  The Emperor's New Security Indicators: An evaluation of website authentication and the effect of role playing on usability studies, Schechter et al. , IEEE S&P'07

Additional reading
4. Computer Security and Privacy for Refugees in the
United States
, Simko et al., IEEE S&P'18
5. Why Phishing Works, Dhamija et al., CHI'06












Week 10, 11



Case study 1: preserving privacy of social content
The problem of "privacy in public"

The era of big data: Large-scale
internet measurement
to understand usability
Case study: Usability of Social Access Control Lists.
Shortcoming of this approach

Required reading
1. Imagined Communities: Awareness, Information Sharing, and Privacy on the Facebook, Acquisti and Gross, PETS’06
2. Quantifying the Invisible Audience in Social Networks, Bernstein et. al., CHI’2013
3. Privacy Wizards for Social Networking Sites, Fang et. al., WWW'2010
4. Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks, Acquisti and Gross, WPES’05
5. Understanding and Specifying Social Access Control Lists, Mondal et. al. SOUPS’14

Additional reading
6. Analyzing Facebook Privacy Settings: User Expectations vs. Reality, Liu et al. , IMC’2011
7. Silent Listeners: The Evolution of Privacy and Disclosure on Facebook, Stutzman, Gross and Acquisti, Journal of Privacy and Confidentiality, 2012
project topics released









Week 12,13



Case study 2:

Privacy and Security in Machine learning




Required reading
1. Deep Learning with Differential Privacy
2. Membership Inference Attacks against Machine Learning Models
3. Machine Learning with Membership Privacy using Adversarial Regularization
4. Extracting Training Data from Large Language Models

Additional reading

5. Privacy Preserving Machine Learning — Course Page

6. Differentially Private Empirical Risk Minimization

7. Comprehensive Privacy Analysis of Deep Learning: Passive and Active White-box Inference Attacks against Centralized and Federated Learning






Week
14


Identity and Authentication
 
  Passwords
Usability of two/multi factor authentication

Required reading

  1. Password Management Strategies for Online Accounts, Gaw et al., SOUPS'06
  2. How does your password measure up? The effect of strength meters on password creation, Ur et. al, Usenix Security'12
3. Fast, Lean, and Accurate: Modeling Password Guessability Using Neural Networks, Melicher,  et al., Usenix Security'16

4. MASCARA: Systematically Generating Memorable And Secure Passphrases, Mukherjee et al.
5. zxcvbn: Low-Budget Password Strength Estimation, Daniel Lowe Wheeler