Professor Reiher does a decent job of going through all the materials at a moderate pace. The projects were difficult and takes a long time, so be prepared for that. Really appreciate how accommodating Professor Reiher is of the remote situation. All our exams are remote and he made classes hybrid + always recorded.

I feel like materials were all pretty high level. Some are useful and some I'm not too sure whether I will remember them. Overall, not too difficult since exams were remote and open book. However, if the class is taught completely in person, be aware, the exams will be very hard.

Class was a lot easier than it would have been in-person. A lot of the open book midterm/final questions were things you could just look up. The labs weren't too bad, and the final project was a group security evaluation of iptables. Lectures were at 8am so about 70% of the class (including me) stopped going, which didn't matter too much since everything was recorded. All in all, pretty solid upper div CS class. Learned a lot.

Great class, learned a lot, but it's tough to attend every lecture at 8am tho

Great class, great professor. Reiher teaches by using his slides, but he is a really good lecturer. There's only one lecture out of eighteen when I've been actually bored. Labs can be difficult, but the TAs are very responsive online and pretty much answer every single question. The professor also clarifies lecture material questions online in great detail.

For future students, to do well in this class:
1. Attend every lecture. Yes, it's an 8am, but like all the other reviews posted here, you will deeply regret not attending. It's so much easier to remember the content when Reiher explains it in class.
2. Skim the textbook if you want to save time. If you only want to do well on tests, then skip all the math heavy proofs. You can also probably get away with reading examples that are provided within each section if you understand the concept being explained. Just read the examples that have their own bolded sections like the Clipper chip.
3. Do the extra credit on each lab. Reiher states that there may be a slight curve on the syllabus depending on the class average, but the reality of his class (and other CS classes) is that many people use Github to get perfect scores on the assignments. If you really, really want an A, you have to do the extra credit to make up for the mistakes you make on the exams.

I feel like this class has a bunch of missed opportunities. The labs are great, interesting and definitely fun to work on. However, the lecture material could be improved since it's pretty generic. The reading is a bit dense, and to do well in the exams you need to at least skim the textbook. Honestly, reading the textbook is super important.

Reiher is a good lecturer and always responds well to questions. Some TAs are better than others, but campuswire is a great place to have questions answered. Starting the projects early is a must, otherwise it's pretty stressful. Especially for the MITM lab, since you need to use 3 nodes at once.

One of the labs was basically exploring an existing open source software for vulnerabilities with a team. It was a bit ambiguous in terms of requirements/figuring out what they were looking for, but make sure you apply the concepts learned under secure programming/common vulnerabilities and you should be fine.

Took both 111 and 136 with Prof Reiher, I think I learned a lot in these classes . He is a very patient and knowledgeable person, and he definitely helps you whenever you need help, he always responds fast to emails and requests and very approachable. He really cares about students and he is always happy to answer the questions you have, and the answers are very detailed and intuitive . I'm genuinely impressed by him and I'm always grateful to him for everything he has done to help us. Look forward to other classes he teaches.

Great prof, really interesting class. Prof Reiher is really engaging and a great lecturer. The 8am is tough, but you should try to go anyways. I skipped a few lectures, but I regretted it in the end because I remembered how great of a lecturer Prof Reiher is. The projects were all really cool, you get to do illegal stuff in a controlled environment. TAs were all good as with any Reiher class. Would definitely take again if I could.

Class: Easy. How easy? I mean, realistically, everything he teaches you already know. The only stuff that you might not know is some of the OS and firewall things, but even those are pretty trivial. A light review will get you through both midterm and test.

Prof: Nice enough guy, but don't cross him. He'll rarely let you make anything up so stay on top of your stuff.

Attendance: Why bother, 8 AM. Just read the slides and if you don't get them, read the book. Luckily this is an interesting topic so it's a pretty easy read. The theoretical proofs are a bore but his tests don't require any proofs.

Labs: Really fun and interesting. I loved the SYN flood and ARP poisoning lab. Only major issue was the TA is new and basically clueless. He read the spec to us in discussions. Dude, we know how to read.

Class:
Security class is very difficult. As professor explain, "this is the field where your opponent actively tries to screw you over." Teaching method is like this: class teaches theory where discussion practice those theory. However, the exam is purely on the theory. It is kinda hard.

How to get best possible grade:
As mention on the post on May 2010, you need to go to class. Before you attempt to take this class, try to mentally commit yourself to go to class every morning at 8 a.m. and listen to his slide lecture. Yes, he teaches by slide, because there is a lot of information. He does stop and explain if you have questions and ONLY IF you have questions. You have to actively follow his lecture. I did commit going to class, but after time zone change in the fall, I can't get up so early (because I commute); I ended up sleeping in. The exam is on what he said in lecture and in slide and in textbook. DON'T RELY on slide along, because after midterm, the slide is not helpful as the slide before midterm. Oh, one more thing about the slide: there are some "hidden" slides (some feature by Microsoft office). If you attempt to print out, those hidden slide does not get printed out. He said he will not test on the hidden slide. Do you willing to or trust him enough to take his words on it???

Yes, some information on the exam also come from the textbook. I think the best time to read the textbook is after listen to the lecture. You can determine what he didn't cover in class, but in the text.

Discussion:
Peter Peterson is my TA. He is very helpful and knowledgeable. The assignment is very fun to do. There are TON OF EXTRA CREDIT for the assignment. You might want to do them. :P I won't tell you what are the extra credit, because I think it is same every quarter. If you don't do well on the exam, consider the extra credit.

Final thought:
He uses slide; but but he tells you "stories" about everything on the slide. The stories is what you will remember. That is what make him better than other professor who uses slide.

And you should read other post on May 2010.

Reiher's lectures were always pretty interesting, and the labs were very practical and actually quite fun. Labs are done on the ISI deter testbed, so you actually get to run real security attacks against real machines. (For one of the labs, we were supposed to ARP poison a network, but a few people poisoned the wrong NIC and ended up poisoning the whole testbed which prevented anyone from logging into the testbed.)

A lot of people skipped lecture when I took the class because Reiher puts his slides online, and it was an 8am class. I would highly advise not doing this since the slides are just an outline of what he talks about, and the lectures are really quite interesting! His exams have a lot of multiple choice questions, which people usually think are easy until they actually take the midterm. He likes to ask questions like:
which of the following are NOT reasons for why blah is NOT used for doing...
a) blah is NOT good for...
b) blah and blah are NOT...
....

So basically you just have to read his questions really carefully, be very careful of the NOTs and make sure you know all the fine details. Also, he likes to throw in questions from the book which nobody seemed to read.

Midterm grades ended up being really low (only two people got above a 90, I was one of them), mostly because so many people skipped lectures. But I went to every lecture, skimmed the book, and only studied for a few hours before each exam and I managed to pull off an A in the class, which is unusual for me because I'm usually not the kind of person that gets good grades without studying.

I highly advise Reiher's 136 class, its good, practical, and often fun stuff, and Reiher's an interesting lecturer. As long as you go to lecture and listen, you can pull off a decent grade without too much extra trouble.