EECS 388

388

FA15, Prof. Halderman

This class was hands-down the best class I have taken in my undergraduate career. It touches on so many topics that are necessary for any CS major to know: cryptography, networking, applications, the web, and a bit of forensic analysis. While lectures don't help with the projects, the discussion sections are helpful and you are required to work on every project with a partner. The projects we were given were not challenging (each part often required very little code), but usually took significant amounts of time to figure out. The lectures are not recorded, which was disappointing but not the end of the world. I felt that the workload for this class was fair. The exam was fairly challenging, but had a nice curve. Be sure to start all of the projects early or you might get stuck and not finish in time. It is critical to do well on every project because the class averages are usually quite high.

FA14, Prof. Halderman

A very interesting course on the basics of security; covers web, physical, hardware, and a couple other topics in security. You learn by doing, and while a lot isn't explained in class in terms of the practical attacks, you have a partner to help you out, which is nice. It seemed like they were short on teaching staff, but office hours were super helpful. Overall, a fun and engaging course. Course syllabus can be found here: https://www.eecs.umich.edu/courses/eecs388/. Besides short teaching staff, this course could all of a sudden take a lot of your time. Each programming project is done in a different language, so you would have some overhead depending on your comfortability with things. For example, my partner and I struggled with the web project because we also had to learn JS, which other teams were able to just jump right in. However, the time spent on each project definitely varies depending on your partner and you and your experience. There was one final, which was daunting. Make sure to do well on the homeworks and projects because almost everyone does.

FA15, prof. unspecified

I really liked how this course wasn't like a traditional computer science course in the sense that it was a good balance of applying concepts learned in class while also learning and being able to discuss interesting things related to computer security (research, politics, etc.). This class gives students a great exposure to various security topics (it barely scratches the surface of some concepts, but I believe it gives a good introduction). I consider the class to be one of my favorite classes taken at the University. I did not like how the professors were seemingly always absent but I understand that's something that can't be helped (they're pretty important researchers in their fields and are often out attending conferences). Honestly, I found the class to be pretty light. Homework and projects aren't very difficult. The final is rough - make sure you pay attention in class and can correctly identify certain vulnerabilities in code snippets.