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Level 3 · Ph.D

Ph.D Advanced Computer Security

Security · Live · v0

Doctoral security research — formal threat modelling, systems security at depth, and frontier defensive research.

Path type

Security

Requirements

MSc Advanced Computer Security

Enrollment

€39.90

Deadline

Next cohort starts 2027-09-06 (AY 2027/28)

Length

+1 year · 56 phases

Language

English · Español

Content freshness

Curriculum updated 2026-08-22 · content rev 6a493f1a

Cortex Credits (CC)

280 CC · 421 CC across all tiers of this programme
What are Cortex Credits?

Syllabus

View the phase syllabus

0. Foundations & research-grade lab hygiene
1. From practitioner to researcher
2. The hardened research range
3. Security-research methodology & the literature
4. Adversary modeling & formal threat models
5. Measurement & evaluation in security
6. The modern allocator, deep
7. Advanced heap exploitation
8. Advanced information disclosure
9. Advanced control-flow hijacking
10. Code reuse at scale
11. Modern mitigations & their limits
12. Bypassing advanced mitigations
13. Linux kernel exploitation (intro)
14. Exploit reliability & weaponization engineering
15. Static program analysis foundations
16. Taint analysis & abstract interpretation
17. Symbolic & concolic execution
18. Coverage-guided fuzzing, deep
19. Structure-aware & grammar-based fuzzing
20. Automated triage & root-cause analysis
21. Hybrid fuzzing & directed analysis
22. The vulnerability-research pipeline
23. Advanced static reversing
24. Advanced dynamic analysis & emulation
25. Anti-analysis, deep
26. Malware techniques & capability analysis (lab-only)
27. C2 & adversary-emulation design (lab range)
28. Memory forensics, deep
29. Binary similarity, provenance & attribution reasoning
30. Practical cryptanalysis of the stack's crypto
31. Side-channel & timing attacks, applied
32. Protocol attacks
33. Randomness & key-management failures
34. Applied formal reasoning for protocols
35. Cryptographic misuse detection
36. Advanced web & HTTP attacks
37. Advanced lateral movement & pivoting
38. Identity & auth-infrastructure attacks
39. Container & isolation-escape reasoning
40. Supply-chain & build-pipeline attacks (lab)
41. Network detection engineering
42. Telemetry engineering with eBPF
43. Detection-as-code, in depth
44. Threat hunting & detection evaluation
45. Machine learning for security (honest treatment)
46. Secure-by-construction systems
47. Exploit-mitigation design & evaluation
48. Incident response & adversary emulation as research
49. Vulnerability-research methodology & responsible disclosure
50. Reading, reproducing & refuting security research
51. Writing security research
52. Proposing the capstone
53. Capstone I: execute the research
54. Capstone II: the verified publication
55. Frontier, ethics & close; portal integration

Syllabus →

Enrolment prerequisites

• A verified account and admissions-committee approval.
• Completion of MSc Advanced Computer Security.