What's Chris so shocked about? That the University of Calgary is offering a course that "will focus on developing malicious software such as computer viruses, worms and Trojan horses."
The professor offering the course argues that to be able to combat malicious code students need to understand how it works. This isn't a new concept, any good security professional needs to know how attacks work in order to be able to know how to defend against them. But the wording of the release has got some security professionals alarmed since it could be construed as a way to train virus writers rather than preventers.
What I find most bizarre is that the Universiy feels the need to market themselves like a product and issue press releases about course offerings. Is their enrollment that low?
Posted by Diana at May 24, 2003 07:31 AM