#140 overallHidden gem
CS 161 Computer Security
UC Berkeley
3 recommenders · 3 threads · recommended in 2 years, 2017–2020 · score 3.2
UC Berkeley's undergraduate computer security course, covering security principles and common vulnerabilities, taught in several semesters with course notes and slides published online. Commenters refer to the lecture notes and course materials from different years.
Commenters call it a great course with excellent course notes and slides, and praise the Berkeley security instructors (Wagner, Weaver).
Science & Engineeringintermediatefreemixed#computer security#vulnerabilities#course notes#wagner#berkeley
Recommendations by year
20062026
If you have a good CS background, I highly recommend the lecture notes for the security class I took in undergrad: https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs161/sp10/
That's from 10 years ago, so you might be able to find video of a more recent version; try to find a year when Wagner taught, he's great.
Again, the course notes (Wagner's for the most part) are really excellent.
http://www-inst.cs.berkeley.edu/~cs161/sp16/
The slides are really excellent. You will miss the opportunity of Weaver frothing at the mouth and using expletives willy nilly. Popa is clearly smart but needs to turn her mic up.
This is a great course. Unless Kubi is teaching 162, anyone should sub 161 for 162. And suffer. Berkeley has a murderers row of good security people. Song, Weaver, Wagner, Popa, .... If Song teaches 261 again, I'm gonna sit in.
That is a great list to have so far! On top of that, I have to highly recommend CS168: Internet Architecture (preferably with Scott Shenker), CS 161: Computer Security (with either Wagner, or Weaver), and CS169: Software Engineering (with Armando Fox, also available on EdX). These are the 3 courses that were most influential on my Undergrad experience (on top of the 61 series and 162)
I strongly prefer Patterson and Hennessy Computer Organization and Design to their Computer Architecture which I really don't like; if I do look something up in CA, it's in an old edition. The Dragon Book 2nd ed is awesome. We didn't have a book for 61B. I didn't like the OS book whatever it was. Norvig + Russell is pretty darned good. The notes for CS 70 are awesome as are the CS 161 notes.
If Kubi is teaching just take the course.
Dunno if CS 161, Computer Security, is available but it's a great course. Wagner or Weaver both have their points.
CS 70 should make the list but the lecture notes are enough.
Strongly prefer Kubi for OS or pretty much anything.
Binary exploitation involves a pretty different skill set compared to web exploitation. You will need to understand the basics of computer architecture and then you can continue to build up skills to learn how to exploit security vulnerabilities in code.
I haven't used it myself but I've heard good things about https://pwn.college/ . It is run by former organizers of defcon ctf and professors at ASU. UC Berkeley also offers a security course with some pretty digestable modules on binary exploitation at https://sp23.cs161.org/ . Beyond the courses, the best way to improve is just more practice so I would highly recommend just trying your hand at the challenges in a ctf.
Overall, binary exploitation is a little different as you need some hard skills (ex. understanding what the stack is) to get a good start.