EC ENGR M117
Computer System Security
Also listed as COM SCI M138: the same class, and each department holds its own seats and its own grade history.
Grades
3.95
Average grade awarded in EC ENGR M117. Not a student rating: this is what the grades were.
In the A range
96%
of the 266 letter grades
D, F or W
0.0%
of every letter grade awarded, plus withdrawals
Taken pass/no pass
-
the registrar has this letter grade only this term
The registrar's own records: 266 grades over 2 terms, Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. Every instructor is pooled here.
What is inside that record
No summer session is in that record.
The table below splits them, and term averages across those 2 terms ran 3.91 to 3.99.
Historical grades for all professors, across recorded terms. The course summary above includes all professors.
- A+ 117 · 44.0%
- A 130 · 48.9%
- A- 8 · 3.0%
- B+ 6 · 2.3%
- B 3 · 1.1%
- B- 2 · 0.8%
Percentages are of the 266 letter grades. Grey bars are non-letter outcomes.
How the non-letter outcomes are counted
They are excluded from the GPA entirely rather than scored, because counting a P as a 4.0 would be a fabrication.
By instructor
| Instructor | Predicted GPA | Raw | n | Terms | A range | Workload | Fall 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TIAN, YUAN reviews ↗ | 3.95 | 3.95 | 266 | 2 | 96% | - | not teaching it |
Why Predicted is not the Raw average
“Predicted” is shrunk toward the course average, which is itself shrunk toward the department, so an instructor with a handful of students sits near the course mean rather than topping the list.
Grade records describe outcomes. For what a course is like to take, read student reviews written on dibs below or follow the separate external review link.
Workload and assignments
Work types reported in BruinWalk reviews of this course, across recorded instructors and terms. They may differ from this term's syllabus.
dibs has not read this course’s reviews, so it cannot say what kind of work it sets. That is dibs not having looked. It is not a course without papers or exams, and the reviews linked below are the answer until dibs catches up.
What comes first
The chain dibs can see is 3 courses long before EC ENGR M117. Read from Fall 2026, because dibs has not read a class page for EC ENGR M117 in Fall 2025 and a department can change what it requires. dibs has read a class page for every course in it.
Counted in courses rather than quarters: dibs does not know which of them a department lets you take together.
From the registrar's catalog
(Formerly numbered 117.) (Same as Computer Science M138.) Lecture, four hours; laboratory, one hour; outside study, seven hours. Requisite: Computer Science 33. Recommended requisite: Computer Science 111. Introduction to fundamental knowledge of computer system security. Students gain understanding of exploit techniques; learn to use the security tools; learn to design and implement secure systems; and learn concepts of computer security including software vulnerability analysis and defense, web security, mobile security, and network security. Covers the latest security topics in practice (e.g., cryptocurrency), and in research (e.g., state-of-the-art fuzzing techniques and machine-learning-based security analysis). Students get hands-on experience in analyzing and designing secure systems. Includes course project for cutting-edge security research. Letter grading.
Sections in Fall 2025
From the people who took it
Student reviews
What taking EC ENGR M117 was like: the work, the teaching, and what students wish they’d known.
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