I found the course very interesting and learning was efficient. The way course was organized helped me to understand topics like blockchain, cryptography and adversaries’ views more in-depth. Homework was a bit overwhelming at first but once I started to work on them, it was actually easy to follow which gave motivation to keep learning. Presentations given by peer students brought different aspects on the table and gave lots of in-detail examples. It was a good training for myself.
I found the way the course was structured excellent, almost revoluzionary compared to my previous courses! This course was useful for me and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to take a course to understand basics in computer security and trust.
A great course with lot's of interesting content.
Teros enthusiasm and domain knowledge kept the lectures very enjoyable to attend.
Also the homework was very educative while also a lot of fun - to the extent I often mistakenly spent way too much time on tinkering with them.
I really enjoyed the course! I think it was my favourite course of all the courses I've taken. The lectures were extremely interesting and informative. I learned a lot about blockchain, Bitcoin, mitre att&ck, Tor network, and other cyber security topics. Homework was challenging and interesting, I don't remember that I've ever done any homework with such an amount of interest and excitement. I liked the way we should have returned the assignments, I think it helped me to understand the topics in greater depth than if I would just read about them. All the information that was given on the course is up to date and helpful in real life. The best takeaway from the course, for me personally, is that I got even more interested in cyber security and will proceed to improve my knowledge in this area. I wish I could visit the penetration testing course, but I already graduating this spring. Thank you!
— Mariya Kulkina, 2022-05-20I learned more than I initially would have expected about cryptography, blockchain and security in general. Having background in software development I already was familiar with many topics, but now I got to dive more in-depth with some of the things like for example cracking passwords.
This course was beneficial for me because of my beforementioned background. I do now feel like I know more about things I do daily in work. Especially the extra work I did with Cryptopals-challenges improved my knowledge a lot.
I would like to thank a lot for the course and I suggest it for anybody that is interested in security or crypto.
Thank you for the course.
Learned a lot of new stuff, most of the contents were new to me. I have seen hashes, but didn't realize how easy even hashed password are to crack with right tools and approaches (hashcat, John the ripper, brute force etc..). Threat models were also new to me in that level of detail and I wasn't expecting sites like MITRE attacks to be public for everyone.
Course is definitely useful and I would hope anyone with computers would study security more and would recommend this to anyone. Presentations were interesting but I would maybe limit the lengths to max 15 minutes to make some space for more structured way of the lecture contents. I likes the stories, they make lessons more interesting to attend. For the book references and links I would have hoped to get a list of to the website/moodle and maybe some slides every now and then would make the contents easier to follow. Homework was nicely structured, theory part with some hands-on-exercises, great combination. I assume some of them being quite challenging without too much prior technical experience.
Thank you for the course! A suitably theoretical and practical approach! I’m familiar with administrative information security to this technical part came in need.
Br
Antti
This was an interesting and good course. Everything on the course was new to me and I learned a lot. All the techniques and tools used in the course were new to me. Especially setting up and using a virtual machine and a Linux operating system was interesting and enjoyable because I haven’t done anything like it before. It was interesting to download and use the TOR browser and I learned a bit about Bitcoin. The block chain itself did not open for me. This is probably because of me; I just don’t understand its logic and purpose. I really learned a lot about security and how important it is. The course will help me in the future, and I will be more specific with passwords in the future. I liked the presentations of others and the topics they covered were really interesting. Of course, my own presentation and performance makes me nervous, but in the end, it’s okay for me. The homework was really interesting and due to my own starting point also quite challenging for me. Some of the tasks remained unresolved or halfway. Although the tasks were left halfway through, I really learned a lot from them. It would have been nice to look at some homework together to see how they are solved, especially those that used a Linux terminal. all in all, perhaps the most interesting and best course I have taken! I really liked it a lot. I would recommend the course to all students!
— Jan Potrykus, 2022-05-18This was a very good course. I liked it a lot. The teaching was high quality. Hashcat and Mitre ATT&CK framework were new to me. This course also improved my knowledge of bitcoin and blockchain. The homework was inspiring. Technical parts were the best of the course and they were challenging enough. The topics of the presentations were interesting and they complemented the course content well. I will recommend this course to all my fellow students. Thank you!
— Teppo, 2022-05-17Course had very interesting and important topics, things how Bitcoin and blockchains work was new to me as well as TOR network, was really interesting to know about those. Cracking passwords was fun to try out and new to me also. The frameworks were new too.
I think the schedule of some presentations / aftertalk could be improved - some topics were handled for like 30-45mins after the presentation and some were only like 5 minutes, so a set time for each presentation topic would make the schedule better, end topics felt rushed.
A lot of new things overall and course was otherwise great.
I really liked this course. I learned what TOR and Bitcoin are and how they work, got acquainted with the Metre ATT@CK framework and Lockheed Martin The Cyber Kill Chain. I also refreshed my memory of the basics of cryptography and tried hacking Hashes. Each homework assignment contained a part of theory and a part of practical tasks that were interesting to do. I recommend this course for study not only to IT specialists, but also to all those who are interested in information security and blockchain.
— Aleksandr Pantsesnyi, 2022-05-17The course's teaching and learning approach were unlike anything else I'd ever experienced. The course's core principle is learning through practice. As a result, the activities from the course are quite useful and instructive. Although the presentation aspect may appear intimidating at first, once you understand that making a presentation on a topic you are interested in provides a variety of opportunities to learn and interact with others, it will become second nature. It will go without a hitch (At least for me it went well, I suppose). A similar course with a longer duration and more credits, where students can come up with some concept projects, would be an excellent choice, in my opinion.
— Ishup Ali Khan, 2022-05-17Did you learn something? Do you now know something you did not know before the course? (Models, frameworks, ideas, tools?)
-I learned a lot. In many aspects my eyes have been open and its great not to only learn about security with computers, network, etc but with real life examples.
I definitely learned a lot I did not know.
Did you do something for the first time? (Used some technique or a tool for the first time?)
-I did many things for the first time, many of the more technical things we had to do were all a first time. Listening to the different presentation topics were all a first time as well. Including my own.
Is this useful? Are these skills and this knowledge useful in companies or your work?
- I think it will be useful in a way. I might not affect my company as I am not technical enough but from my own habits there will be some changes to secure my devices. I also think that now that I listen to security from my company I will be able to understand a bit more than I used to.
How did you like the presentations? Interesting subject? Did you like presenting? Useful information? Actionable?
- I thought the presentations were very interesting. I liked presenting although I did an analysis on Stuxnet using Attack and Kill Chain, which might have been a bit more interesting if I would have explained more about the story of it. (At least that is my opinion).
Did you find homework useful? Interesting? Challenging enough?
Feelings: did you enjoy the course?
- I think I had some of the best homework that I have ever gotten in my life. I was for once excited to do homework.
It was challenging enough for me at least, had to learn a lot and quickly.
One comment is from the summaries for the homework. I think I could have skipped those as they took some time to do. If the people are in the course + working at the same time, I'm sure everyone is here because they are interested in it, so its up to them how much they would like to read and how thoroughly as well.
I have to say there was one particular topic I could have skiped so, doing a summary of that, wasn't the best.
Although even with that topic I wasn't that into, it was great to learn about it and specially all the other things I did get to enjoy.
Other feedback on the homework was that it would be great like the hashes, can of worms, Tor, and other hands on technical activities, to go through in the class and for Tero to explain more. I got to see the can of worms or hashes and I would really like to continue playing around with that.
How could I improve the course? (I can make almost any change here, if it's important)
See above.
Would you recommend the course? Have you already recommended it? Who would benefit from the course (a colleague, a fellow student)?
-I would definitely recommend some of my non-technical colleagues but also some technical ones that are interested in security.
Forgot to ask in class- how to uninstall Tor from my VM?
This was a super interesting course, slightly scary to find out about the adversial thinking, but still so important to understand in today's business life. Tero is a inspiring and fun teacher!
— Heli, 2022-05-17Here's a link to the password cracker Jupyter notebook file demonstrated this week for any of you interested:
https://github.com/juusoh008/main/blob/85612afc8ded23d56dd4fb8179901de953c7c106/password.ipynb