I see your point. On the other hand, there are times I worry that "teach the hacker mentality" approach to secure development training smacks a bit too much teaching future policemen the delights of robbery, rape, torture, and murder in order to prepare the to defend the public against robbers, rapists, torturers, and murders.
Definitely teach - with examples - what it is about software that makes it so easy to exploit and violate. But stop short of handing the students detailed blueprints and instructions, reinforced by lots of hands-on lab time. I'm just untrusting enough of human nature to worry that once some of them discover how much more fun it is to hack than to defend against hacking, what you'll end up with is not the next Bob Seacord but the next Kevin Mitnick. At the very least, make psychological exams a prerequisite of acceptance into your class, so you can weed out the likely psychopaths and sociopaths. Karen Mercedes Goertzel, CISSP Associate 703.698.7454 [email protected] ________________________________________ From: [email protected] [[email protected]] On Behalf Of Olin Sibert [[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, August 25, 2009 8:16 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [SC-L] Where Does Secure Coding Belong In the Curriculum? I'm mostly a lurker here, and I'm a practitioner rather than a professional educator, but there's a viewpoint I haven't seem much of that I want to support, namely: Exploits are FUN. Teach from that angle, and I think you'll get more traction.... _______________________________________________ Secure Coding mailing list (SC-L) [email protected] List information, subscriptions, etc - http://krvw.com/mailman/listinfo/sc-l List charter available at - http://www.securecoding.org/list/charter.php SC-L is hosted and moderated by KRvW Associates, LLC (http://www.KRvW.com) as a free, non-commercial service to the software security community. _______________________________________________
