HACS202 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Bertrand Sobesto HACS202 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/20/2024	Honestly, this course is a tossup. You need to either know people or be extremely lucky with your group. The assignments outside of the group project are not explained properly, so make sure to clarify them with Bertrand as you can easily make mistakes. The lectures throughout the class are not engaging and boring. The group project requires quite a bit of effort with all of its components. You need to select a topic that Bertrand doesn't think lowly of as well as make sure you are getting proper data. You may not get data which Bertrand says happens at times, but if you cannot carry out statistical tests then you will end up losing major points, so make sure your project design yields data. Grading is very harsh and Bertrand will take off points without any consideration. He is terse and unapproachable, and his sense of humor is unlikeable. However, he responds to emails quickly and will sometimes postpone deadlines. Although this course is crucial as part of the ACES experience, it is more stressful than it needs to be under Bertrand.
Bertrand Sobesto HACS202 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/10/2023	In this course we built a honeypot and gained experience with data collection and processing using Unix commands. This course is primarily composed of group projects with three solo mini projects. If you do not have prior experience with the command line/cybersecurity basics, the assignments may be difficult to complete as those are the classes prerequisites. Pros: Grading was fair The TAs were helpful. Acceptable amount of work After issues with the SDI software, the due dates were adjusted accordingly Cons: Monotone, sometimes showed up very late to lecture Many issues with the UMD SDI software, although I wouldn't say this was the professors fault in all cases
Bertrand Sobesto HACS202 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/14/2022	A course where we get an intro to cybersec (making a honeypot, checking through network logs, etc., etc.) Good parts: It felt like we were actually getting experience with cybersecurity. Even if it is just bots, we are managing the sessions, checking through all the files, seeing what commands were run. It was very fulfilling to get the traffic and be able to analyze it, and I would daresay it's even fun to have the great deal of freedom in choosing a topic we want and getting the networks to edit how the machine works in some way. In my case, my group was full of people who also put in lots of effort into researching and working on it, so we all did a fair share and it was refreshing socially (although I have heard of groups that exclude others and don't allow people to participate... ouch). Bad parts: The grading on our parts was quite harsh: they really want us to pour a lot of detail into writing the reports, and our group flubbed that somewhat so even though we spent a lot of time working for the class, our priority for writing was low so our overall grade was marginally lower than it should have been for how much time we spent. The timing of the class is also such a burden, because some nights we would stay until 9 trying to resolve issues, instead of splitting it over 2-3 days per week (although due to the nature of Bertrand's work it seems like it will stay this way). My group is one that didn't have data until the last month and there was a lot of stress around trying to reconfigure our whole paper to this fact. In my experience having an earlier option to get/set & deploy honeypots would greatly help the workflow of this class. As stated in other reviews, some other assignments are and the lectures are tedious and unhelpful, and it could be refined to be more interesting/memorable if Bertrand put a little effort into it. However, he is helpful if you are upfront about a problem so it should be highlighted to ask him for help if anything doesn't work as expected. This class is required for ACES Minor people not in the LLP and it's almost always Bertrand, so I'd say make the experience one that's more positive than negative, spend a great deal of effort on writing or else your grade could falter but also try to get along with your group and make an interesting question/experiment as this class will be quite boring without it.
Bertrand Sobesto HACS202 Expecting a B- Anonymous 11/10/2022	Terrible course, unreasonable grading. Do not take.
Bertrand Sobesto HACS202 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/22/2022	I took this course in Spring 2021 Pros: + Easy grader + Provides specialized help for your specific project when needed Cons: - Monotone, boring lecturer - Mandatory peer reviews are waaaay too long, will easily take an hour apiece - Assignments are particularly hard for those not well versed in lower level cybersecurity or linux programming
Bertrand Sobesto HACS202 Anonymous 05/13/2022	I wish he learned how to lecture, his voice is very monotone. However, he is very reasonable with deadlines and wants everyone to succeed in the class. I think that it is not his fault that not everyone in the class knows Linux, since the CompSci students have an advantage, compared to other majors who took hacs201 to learn Linux, a 1 credit class that insufficiently prepares us for the HACS202 aces minor group project. Overall, it is quite obvious he is a part-time professor, he has a full-time job and that probably is why this class runs until 9:15 PM.
Bertrand Sobesto HACS202 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 06/21/2020	I had a completely different experience than the person below me. Bertrand was a super chill lecturer and he made the class enjoyable and rewarding, even with the challenges of COVID and online class. He does a good job of making groups balanced (e.g. balancing students with lots of experience with students with less experience) and checks in weekly to make sure your group is on track. He was available outside of class time for meetings if needed and the grading for assignments was fair.
Bertrand Sobesto HACS202 Anonymous 12/23/2018	He is one of the worst professors I have ever had. He's not even a real teacher, he works in the department of IT somewhere and he just comes in to share his knowledge basically. He DOES NOT TEACH YOU. He will take random points off your assignments for no reason and then when he returns the rubric, it has criteria that was never mentioned before in the assignment description. He seemed nice and jolly at first and really he's just a prick. One day when half of his students didn't show up to class (because they don't learn anything), he assigned a 10 point pop quiz. What a sad man.

Bertrand Sobesto
HACS202

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/20/2024

Honestly, this course is a tossup. You need to either know people or be extremely lucky with your group. The assignments outside of the group project are not explained properly, so make sure to clarify them with Bertrand as you can easily make mistakes. The lectures throughout the class are not engaging and boring. The group project requires quite a bit of effort with all of its components. You need to select a topic that Bertrand doesn't think lowly of as well as make sure you are getting proper data. You may not get data which Bertrand says happens at times, but if you cannot carry out statistical tests then you will end up losing major points, so make sure your project design yields data. Grading is very harsh and Bertrand will take off points without any consideration. He is terse and unapproachable, and his sense of humor is unlikeable. However, he responds to emails quickly and will sometimes postpone deadlines. Although this course is crucial as part of the ACES experience, it is more stressful than it needs to be under Bertrand.

Bertrand Sobesto
HACS202

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/10/2023

In this course we built a honeypot and gained experience with data collection and processing using Unix commands. This course is primarily composed of group projects with three solo mini projects. If you do not have prior experience with the command line/cybersecurity basics, the assignments may be difficult to complete as those are the classes prerequisites. Pros: Grading was fair The TAs were helpful. Acceptable amount of work After issues with the SDI software, the due dates were adjusted accordingly Cons: Monotone, sometimes showed up very late to lecture Many issues with the UMD SDI software, although I wouldn't say this was the professors fault in all cases

Bertrand Sobesto
HACS202

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
12/14/2022

A course where we get an intro to cybersec (making a honeypot, checking through network logs, etc., etc.) Good parts: It felt like we were actually getting experience with cybersecurity. Even if it is just bots, we are managing the sessions, checking through all the files, seeing what commands were run. It was very fulfilling to get the traffic and be able to analyze it, and I would daresay it's even fun to have the great deal of freedom in choosing a topic we want and getting the networks to edit how the machine works in some way. In my case, my group was full of people who also put in lots of effort into researching and working on it, so we all did a fair share and it was refreshing socially (although I have heard of groups that exclude others and don't allow people to participate... ouch). Bad parts: The grading on our parts was quite harsh: they really want us to pour a lot of detail into writing the reports, and our group flubbed that somewhat so even though we spent a lot of time working for the class, our priority for writing was low so our overall grade was marginally lower than it should have been for how much time we spent. The timing of the class is also such a burden, because some nights we would stay until 9 trying to resolve issues, instead of splitting it over 2-3 days per week (although due to the nature of Bertrand's work it seems like it will stay this way). My group is one that didn't have data until the last month and there was a lot of stress around trying to reconfigure our whole paper to this fact. In my experience having an earlier option to get/set & deploy honeypots would greatly help the workflow of this class. As stated in other reviews, some other assignments are and the lectures are tedious and unhelpful, and it could be refined to be more interesting/memorable if Bertrand put a little effort into it. However, he is helpful if you are upfront about a problem so it should be highlighted to ask him for help if anything doesn't work as expected. This class is required for ACES Minor people not in the LLP and it's almost always Bertrand, so I'd say make the experience one that's more positive than negative, spend a great deal of effort on writing or else your grade could falter but also try to get along with your group and make an interesting question/experiment as this class will be quite boring without it.

Bertrand Sobesto
HACS202

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
11/10/2022

Terrible course, unreasonable grading. Do not take.

Bertrand Sobesto
HACS202

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/22/2022

I took this course in Spring 2021 Pros: + Easy grader + Provides specialized help for your specific project when needed Cons: - Monotone, boring lecturer - Mandatory peer reviews are waaaay too long, will easily take an hour apiece - Assignments are particularly hard for those not well versed in lower level cybersecurity or linux programming

Bertrand Sobesto
HACS202

Anonymous
05/13/2022

I wish he learned how to lecture, his voice is very monotone. However, he is very reasonable with deadlines and wants everyone to succeed in the class. I think that it is not his fault that not everyone in the class knows Linux, since the CompSci students have an advantage, compared to other majors who took hacs201 to learn Linux, a 1 credit class that insufficiently prepares us for the HACS202 aces minor group project. Overall, it is quite obvious he is a part-time professor, he has a full-time job and that probably is why this class runs until 9:15 PM.

Bertrand Sobesto
HACS202

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
06/21/2020

I had a completely different experience than the person below me. Bertrand was a super chill lecturer and he made the class enjoyable and rewarding, even with the challenges of COVID and online class. He does a good job of making groups balanced (e.g. balancing students with lots of experience with students with less experience) and checks in weekly to make sure your group is on track. He was available outside of class time for meetings if needed and the grading for assignments was fair.

Bertrand Sobesto
HACS202

Anonymous
12/23/2018

He is one of the worst professors I have ever had. He's not even a real teacher, he works in the department of IT somewhere and he just comes in to share his knowledge basically. He DOES NOT TEACH YOU. He will take random points off your assignments for no reason and then when he returns the rubric, it has criteria that was never mentioned before in the assignment description. He seemed nice and jolly at first and really he's just a prick. One day when half of his students didn't show up to class (because they don't learn anything), he assigned a 10 point pop quiz. What a sad man.

Reviews for HACS202