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This paper discusses the use of an isolated network laboratory to teach computer security using persistent cooperative groups and an active learning approach. Computer security and computer security education are areas of increasing importance as computer systems become more interconnected. When offered, undergraduate and graduate computer security courses are routinely taught using a traditional lecture format. If the course includes a class project, the class project is limited in scope and constitutes a relatively small portion of the student's grade. This paper examines a different approach in which the class project is the dominant factor in the student's grade. The students work in persistent cooperative teams as either a black or gold team. Black teams attempt to break into other black team computers or attack the gold team. The gold team operates Windows NT, LINUX, and Solaris-based servers and attempts to defend their servers and role-play system administrators. The entire exercise takes place in an isolated lab so as to separate student class activities from the rest of the departmental intranet. Four years of experience running the class with this format suggests that the use of persistent cooperative groups and active learning are effective approaches for teaching network security and are preferred over a lecture-based course.

A b s t r a c tThis paper discusses the use of an isolated network laboratory to teach computer security using persistent cooperative groups and an active learning approach. Computer security and computer security education are areas of increasing importance as computer systems become more interconnected. When offered, undergraduate and graduate computer security courses are routinely taught using a traditional lecture format. If the course includes a class project, the class project is limited in scope and constitutes a relatively small portion of the student's grade. This paper examines a different approach in which the class project is the dominant factor in the student's grade. The students work in persistent cooperative teams as either a black or gold team. Black teams attempt to break into other black team computers or attack the gold team. The gold team operates Windows NT, LINUX, and Solaris-based servers and attempts to defend their servers and role-play system administrators. The entire exercise takes place in an isolated lab so as to separate student class activities from the rest of the departmental intranet. Four years of experience running the class with this format suggests that the use of persistent cooperative groups and active learning are effective approaches for teaching network security and are preferred over a lecture-based course. T h e N e e d for I n f o r m a t i o n S e c u r i t y E d u c a t i o n

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Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is a revolutionary security technology that exploits the laws of quantum mechanics to achieve information-theoretic secure key exchange. QKD enables two parties to ''grow'' a shared secret key without placing any limits on an adversary's computational power. Error reconciliation protocols have been developed that preserve security while allowing a sender and receiver to reconcile the errors in their respective keys. The most famous of these is the Cascade protocol, which is effective but suffers from a high communication complexity and low throughput. The Winnow protocol reduces the communication complexity over Cascade, but has the disadvantage of introducing errors. Finally, Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes have been shown to reconcile errors at rates higher than those of Cascade and Winnow, but with greater computational complexity. In this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of LDPC codes by comparing the runtime, throughput and communication complexity empirically with the Cascade and Winnow algorithms. The effects of inaccurate error estimation, non-uniform error distribution and varying key length on all three protocols are evaluated for identical input key strings. Analyses are performed on the results in order to characterize the strengths and weaknesses of each protocol.