Software Security

The Software Security course, from the University of Maryland, via Coursera, will explore the foundations of software security. The course will cover important software vulnerabilities and attacks that exploit them — such as buffer overflows, SQL injection, and session hijacking — and will consider defenses that prevent or mitigate these attacks, including advanced testing and program analysis techniques.

Importantly, the course takes a “build security in” mentality, considering techniques at each phase of the development cycle that can be used to strengthen the security of software systems. Successful learners in this course typically have completed sophomore/junior-level undergraduate work in a technical field, have some familiarity with programming, ideally in C/C++ and one other “managed” program language (like ML or Java), and have prior exposure to algorithms. Students not familiar with these languages but with others can improve their skills through online web tutorials.