snocrossgjd writes "In a windowless underground computer lab in California, young men are busy cooking up viruses, spam and other plagues of the computer age. Grant Joy runs a program that surreptitiously records every keystroke on his machine, including user names, passwords, and credit-card numbers. Thomas Fynan floods a bulletin board with huge messages from fake users. Yet Joy and Fynan aren't hackers — they're students in a computer-security class at Sonoma State University. Their professor, George Ledin, has showed them how to penetrate even the best antivirus software."
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I agree with this - this instructor is teaching something VERY valuable.

(Even though the potential for misuse is based on individuals own idiosyncracies!)

This, is HOW you learn to UNDERSTAND "the enemy" imo!

(Simply in learning how they think, operate, and in terms of computers? How they code, and methods/mechanics they use).

Cliche (but, true) - "Know thyself", but also "know thy enemy".

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* Darth Sidious (starwars emperor palpatine) said it best:

"In order to be a wise & complete leader, you must embrace... a LARGER view of the force"

Both "Bad/Dark" and "Good/Light"...

APK

P.S.=> What "blew me away", is that various security based companies 'vowed to never hire students from said program'... fools!

Their loss...

These kids have a GREAT instructor, who is probably showing them how to obtain running programs' hWnds, for example, which is running programs' list of "Windows Handles"!

You have that, & you can pass messages to them, & "shut them down", for example... & if protected vs. that?

Well, corrupt their files on disk, or registry initialization entries, etc.

(& thus, by the SAME token? Learn to PROTECT vs. that (& doubtless other things I am missing here as possible avenues of attack vs. say, AntiVirus &/or AntiSpyware programs too))...

See, imo? Unless you understand something, ALL sides of it? You can't improve on it, or defend it vs. attacks etc., period... apk