I was a student in this class (MCS494) and found him to be a great instructor. I learned alot and am have no regrets that I took this class. From talking with my classmates, I believe that is the way the majority of the class feels.
Credit for bugs was 1/n where n was the number of classmates collaborating. So a team of 2 had to find 20 for each member to get full credit for 10 bugs (the course goal; 60% grade).
Credit each student recieved per bug was 1/n where n was the number of collaboraters. So if all 25 or so students got together, we would have had to find far more than 44 bugs to all meet the goal of 10 bugs person.
That said, collaboration was really the key even with the partial credit scenario. From talking to other classmates, those that worked together seemed to do quite well. One team of two classmates had a great system where one would audit code while the other crafted PoC exploits. I realize now that lack of collaboration was my greatest mistake in this class.
Haha... this almost all to surreal for me to take in. Posts on slashdot about tigger webdirs getting owned... tigger going down appearently from the/. effect... Dear lord, cnet picked up this story too. now the whole world nows that most of us will fail. damn, i planning i lying to my parents about my grade.;)
I am uncertain whether or not you were referencing the attitude of profs at UIUC in relation to DJB of UIC. In my opinion, the academic environments of Urbana-Champaign and Chicago campuses are quite different, and your comments concerning UIUC are not relevent to UIC.
I would like to second the comments of my classmate.
I feel as if I am a simliar case to him. I found DJB to be an excellent teacher of this material. This class really excited me and got me interested in software security. I feel privileged to have been a part of this class and do not regret registering at all.
My only regret was that I failed to invest more energy into meeting the course goals. Like my classmate stated before me, in the end, other courses more important to my academic progression took priority over this class.
I was a student in MCS494 at UIC this semester and found DJB to be a great teacher of this material. I feel that he presented the course material clearly and thoroughly while challenging us to learn on our own.
From the beginning of the course, DJB made no illusions as to the objectives of the course and system which we would be graded. I sympathize with any of my classmates that, after investing a significant amount of time and effort, may be a poor grade in the course. However, I feel the need to point out that we were all well aware of what we were getting into and each of that remained in the class accepted the goals that DJB set.
Though I expect that I will recieve a poor grade, I do not regret taking this course. I have learned alot and exposed to ideas that I might have otherwise not. That is what is most important to me.
I am very happy that were _not_ any prerequisites for this course.
Before this semester, I had not taken any computer-related courses at UIC. I do have a fair amount programming and other computer-related knowledge from outside of the acedemic world but my transcript does not reflect this. I thus had been unable to take any of the technical classes that I found interesting. I was becoming quiet disinterested in school as I continued to take the usual gen ed courses. So this semester I jumped at this course when, to my disbelief, I learned that there were in fact no prereqs.
This was the first class that I have taken at this university that has truely excited me. I often hear and read negative characteraztions of DJB. While he his very opinionated, I found him to be good natured with a sense of humor and above all interesting. He is a perfect fit to teach a class such as this, and I could sense that after the first five minutes in class.
In the end, I did not do as well in this class as I would have liked. But I have definately learned alot, which is what is most important to me. My desire to continue attending school has been reinvigorated after finally getting a taste of how interesting and exciting a good class can be.
That course description would be inaccurate because DJB is not stealing students work. He cleary gives credit to the proper students in the advisories.
Readers of this story should keep in mind that DJB was in no way related to the title or content of this story. As far as I know, his only public exposure regarding this course has been the security advisories he submitted to the securesoftware list of the students behalf and the course page on his website.
He explained in class that his reasoning behind handling public disclosure for us in the class is to protect us from any liabilities that may incur.
The story was submitted by one of my classmates in MCS494. The title of the story may give some readers the wrong impression, but DJB is in no way connected to the story submission.
As you noted the advisories he submitted to the securesoftware list cleary give credit to the respective student(s). I think it would be very unfair to say that DJB is taking credit for his students or otherwise exploiting them.
Regardless of what grade each of us will get, I am certain we all learned alot.
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Have you taken a class taught by DJB?
I was a student in this class (MCS494) and found him to be a great instructor. I learned alot and am have no regrets that I took this class. From talking with my classmates, I believe that is the way the majority of the class feels.
These advisories were posted to the securesoftware mailing list and therefore conformed to the terminology defined for the list: http://securesoftware.list.cr.yp.to/contributors.h tml.
Credit for bugs was 1/n where n was the number of classmates collaborating. So a team of 2 had to find 20 for each member to get full credit for 10 bugs (the course goal; 60% grade).
Credit each student recieved per bug was 1/n where n was the number of collaboraters. So if all 25 or so students got together, we would have had to find far more than 44 bugs to all meet the goal of 10 bugs person.
That said, collaboration was really the key even with the partial credit scenario. From talking to other classmates, those that worked together seemed to do quite well. One team of two classmates had a great system where one would audit code while the other crafted PoC exploits. I realize now that lack of collaboration was my greatest mistake in this class.
Haha... this almost all to surreal for me to take in. Posts on slashdot about tigger webdirs getting owned... tigger going down appearently from the /. effect... Dear lord, cnet picked up this story too. now the whole world nows that most of us will fail. damn, i planning i lying to my parents about my grade. ;)
I am uncertain whether or not you were referencing the attitude of profs at UIUC in relation to DJB of UIC. In my opinion, the academic environments of Urbana-Champaign and Chicago campuses are quite different, and your comments concerning UIUC are not relevent to UIC.
I would like to second the comments of my classmate.
I feel as if I am a simliar case to him. I found DJB to be an excellent teacher of this material. This class really excited me and got me interested in software security. I feel privileged to have been a part of this class and do not regret registering at all.
My only regret was that I failed to invest more energy into meeting the course goals. Like my classmate stated before me, in the end, other courses more important to my academic progression took priority over this class.
I was a student in MCS494 at UIC this semester and found DJB to be a great teacher of this material. I feel that he presented the course material clearly and thoroughly while challenging us to learn on our own.
From the beginning of the course, DJB made no illusions as to the objectives of the course and system which we would be graded. I sympathize with any of my classmates that, after investing a significant amount of time and effort, may be a poor grade in the course. However, I feel the need to point out that we were all well aware of what we were getting into and each of that remained in the class accepted the goals that DJB set.
Though I expect that I will recieve a poor grade, I do not regret taking this course. I have learned alot and exposed to ideas that I might have otherwise not. That is what is most important to me.
I am very happy that were _not_ any prerequisites for this course. Before this semester, I had not taken any computer-related courses at UIC. I do have a fair amount programming and other computer-related knowledge from outside of the acedemic world but my transcript does not reflect this. I thus had been unable to take any of the technical classes that I found interesting. I was becoming quiet disinterested in school as I continued to take the usual gen ed courses. So this semester I jumped at this course when, to my disbelief, I learned that there were in fact no prereqs. This was the first class that I have taken at this university that has truely excited me. I often hear and read negative characteraztions of DJB. While he his very opinionated, I found him to be good natured with a sense of humor and above all interesting. He is a perfect fit to teach a class such as this, and I could sense that after the first five minutes in class. In the end, I did not do as well in this class as I would have liked. But I have definately learned alot, which is what is most important to me. My desire to continue attending school has been reinvigorated after finally getting a taste of how interesting and exciting a good class can be.
That course description would be inaccurate because DJB is not stealing students work. He cleary gives credit to the proper students in the advisories. Readers of this story should keep in mind that DJB was in no way related to the title or content of this story. As far as I know, his only public exposure regarding this course has been the security advisories he submitted to the securesoftware list of the students behalf and the course page on his website. He explained in class that his reasoning behind handling public disclosure for us in the class is to protect us from any liabilities that may incur.
The story was submitted by one of my classmates in MCS494. The title of the story may give some readers the wrong impression, but DJB is in no way connected to the story submission.
As you noted the advisories he submitted to the securesoftware list cleary give credit to the respective student(s). I think it would be very unfair to say that DJB is taking credit for his students or otherwise exploiting them.
Regardless of what grade each of us will get, I am certain we all learned alot.