The CYBERUS Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree

WHY CYBERUS?

In a world that is increasingly digital, ransomware, malware, phishing, web-based and web application attacks, distributed denial of service (DDoS), identity theft, data breaches, botnets, cyberespionage, to name only a few of the main types of cyberattacks, have become more and more sophisticated. And they are sometimes combined to carry out crime, sabotage, espionage and destabilisation. Their actors may be individuals defending a cause (so-called ‘hacktivists’) but more often criminal groups working indifferently for mafias or rogue governments anywhere in the world. They are also on the rise and costly.

In 2020, for the first time, there were more connections of IoT objects and equipment (connected cars, smart home automation devices, connected industrial systems, etc.) than of non-IoT terminals. With the deployment of 5G and more and more billions of potentially hackable connected devices in our everyday lives, protecting them has become urgent. Modern computing systems are also vulnerable both from computational and from storage perspectives and most of the performance optimisations in IoT and software systems can potentially expose them to attacks and leak critical information. These existing vulnerabilities lead to information leakage in many different ways from physical to microarchitectural and software information. New leakage channels keep appearing too and the real attack surface is still unknown, both at software and hardware levels. As most top threats rely on software and hardware vulnerabilities, it is essential that future designers master these threats and existing countermeasures.

The CYBERUS Erasmus Mundus Master in Cybersecurity, or CYBERUS, is the joint response by Université Bretagne Sud - UBS (Lorient, France), Université du Luxembourg - UL (Luxembourg) and Université Libre de Bruxelles – ULB (Brussels, Belgium), in conjunction with Tallinn University of Technology - TalTech (Tallinn, Estonia) and some 50 universities, research centres, state agencies, companies and business clusters worldwide to address these types of cybersecurity threats. It offers two tracks – IoT cybersecurity and Sofware Cybersecurity – and it includes compulsory international mobility.

CYBERUS has been selected for funding by the EU to be an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree (EMJMD). An EMJMD is a prestigious, integrated, international study programme, jointly delivered by an international consortium of higher education institutions. It aims to enhance the attractiveness and excellence of European higher education in the world and attract talent to Europe, through a combination of:

• Institutional academic cooperation to showcase European excellence in higher education,
• And individual mobility for all students taking part in the EMJM, with EU-funded scholarships for the best students applying.

OVERVIEW

The CYBERUS Erasmus Mundus Joint Master in cybersecurity, or CYBERUS, is a highly integrated two-year full-time master programme. It is taught in English. It offers 2 specialisation tracks leading to double master’s degrees:

• IoT Cybersecurity (between UBS and ULB): security of digital objects/equipment, of their design and of their connections,
• Software Cybersecurity (between UBS and UL): security of applications, systems and programming.

Students enrolled in the IoT Cybersecurity track receive a double master’s degree from UBS and ULB while those registered in the Software Cybersecurity track receive a double master’s degree from UBS and UL. A balance is targeted in the number of students in either specialisation.

The study plan is the following:

TECHNOLOGICAL MODULES

The vast majority of taught modules are technological (over 70%). Some are common to all students: Secure Advanced Programming, Cryptology, Network and Operating Systems Security, Statistical Foundations for Cybersecurity, Risk Analysis and Introduction to Security by Design, and Pentesting.

Student in the IoT Cybersecurity track will additionally study: Hardware Security and Side Channel Attacks; Protocols, Cryptanalysis and Mathematical Cryptology; AI + Machine Learning for Security; Security of Mobile, Wireless and IoT Networks; and, optionally, Frameworks for the Management of Security or Quantum Computation and Cryptography or Forensics or Advanced Digital Architectures.

Student in the Software Cybersecurity track will additionally study: Compiler Construction; Security of Databases and Blockchain Software; AI and Cybersecurity; Static and Dynamic Software Security Analysis; and, optionally, Resilient Computing or Software Defined Network Security.