This textbook provides an explanation from the ground up of how a computer system works and is designed, starting with circuits and ending with the operating system and its shell. Topics are taught through relatively sophisticated design projects in which the reader/student builds each component or at least a portion of it. The computer components are rudimentary but representative, in the way that one would learn the important aspects of how a car works by building a go-kart that can travel at 50mph.
The descriptions of each computer component include coverage of why, in security terms, the various design choices are made. Once the computer is fully described, security holes in systems are covered, showing exactly where the problems occur, and what aspects of the system they exploit.
Table of Contents:
Overview: Computing-System Design & Security.- Fundamentals: Digital Logic and Digital Circuits.- Fundamentals: The Microprocessor.- Elaborations: Performance, Caches, and Pipeline.- Elaborations: Hardware Support for Operating Systems.
About the Author :
In the middle of COVID lock-downs, Bruce Jacob retired from the University of Maryland after spending the previous 25 years there as a professor, and joined the U.S. Naval Academy’s Department of Cyber Science. He studies the intersection between hardware and security, including the security and protection of memory devices and memory systems; side-channel exploits and their mitigation; and the development of robust computer architectures and operating systems, a pursuit that combines his knowledge of memory systems and operating systems with methodologies derived from the side-channel experiments. He also continues to do research in the design of novel memory architectures and systems that exploit them. Jacob has written two textbooks on computer memory systems and over one hundred articles ranging across memory systems, computer design, embedded systems, operating system design, astrophysics, and algorithmic composition. He holds two patents in memory-systems design and three patents in the circuit design of electric guitars. He has a B.A. degree in Mathematics (cum laude) from Harvard University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from The University of Michigan. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.
William Casey has worked in the areas of threat analysis, code analysis, natural language processing, genomics, bio-informatics, and applied mathematics in academia, industry, and government. He received his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the Courant Institute at New York University. He also holds an M.S. in mathematics from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, a master’s equivalency in computer science from the Courant Institute at New York University, and an M.A. in mathematics from the University of Missouri Columbia. Casey is a member of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).
Casey’s work focuses on the interface of Applied Mathematics, Game Theory, Cyber Systems and Security. In particular, he investigates how the benefits of systems can be validated and assured while non-cooperative, deceptive and adversarial behaviors deterred and mitigated. Game theory provides a principled method to link formal and human systems with examples ranging from poor performing contractors in Government as the Integrator (GATI) acquisition programs to the strategic management of a vulnerability surface in cyber-social-physical systems. Informed by natural strategies, such as Costly Signaling and other biologically inspired strategies, he also focuses on system design aspects that can modulate or offer controls for non-cooperative and deceptive behaviors. By considering the incentives of adversarial and deceptive actions as forms of utility optimization, he links practical scenarios to classical information-asymmetric and signaling game theory, and often enables novel computational approaches leveraging accessible system data. Evolutionary games further enable the understanding of dynamic strategies and offer a computational foundation to design and evaluate notions of resiliency, trust, and stability in cyber-social systems.
Anthony Melaragno has both industry and academic experience in the field of software engineering and cybersecurity. He holds a Ph.D. in Software Engineering from George Mason University and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University. He worked in the intelligence community for over two decades and then joined the newly formed Cyber Science Department at the United States Naval Academy. His teaching and research focus on various aspects of software security, particularly in the detection and analysis of malware and ransomware.
