HACKING AS LEARNING TOOL
Microsoft is sponsoring an initiative designed to train college
students in writing secure code by having them assume the role of
hackers. The University of Leeds in England is the first school to
announce its participation in the program. According to Nick Efford,
senior teaching fellow at that university's School of Computing,
students will be instructed to hack into various applications and to
fix any security vulnerabilities they discover. Efford said the
approach is a departure from current security courses, which only
address network security and cryptography. Stuart Okin of Microsoft
said the company is talking with other universities about being part of
the program. Okin suggested that graduates of such programs will be
sought after in the job market. He said, "The software industry as a
whole will want to take on people who have this skill set." Okin also
noted that the program will not be specific to Microsoft software.
InfoWorld, 21 March 2003
http://www.idg.net/ic_1236724_9677_1-5043.html
