Canadian University to Begin Training Hackers

torok writes "According to an article at The Edmonton Journal, The University of Calgary is going to start teaching select computer science students to write software viruses in a special new disconnected lab. Will Canada be accused of training the world's next generation of cyber-terrorists... or peacekeepers?"

Comments

O'Canada

[psyconaut]

Well, I'm quite proud to be an (adopted) Canadian. I see this as just another way for us to poke the Nazi Americans...what with SARs, mad cow, and our threat to decriminalize pot...why shouldn't we just push the envelope a little more? ;-)

-psy

Re:Crackers

[coupland]

You are wrong, I was there when the terms hacking and cracking came to be and people seem to have forgotten it. Let me make this finally clear:

1. Hacking involves the intentional but usually casual compromise of computer systems. Recently it also includes general technical activity.

2. Cracking is the process of removing copy protection from commercial software. IT HAS NO OTHER MEANING.

3. Phreaking is the process of using illegal methods to make long distance calls.

Even though people have tried for a long time to redefine terms like "hacking", those of us in the know still remember what it means. A decade of redefinitions and wishful thinking will not change this...

H4XOR's in Canadia

[Unixinvid]

What? You mean to tell me that Maple Leaf Canucks are teaching people to hack. We all know that the United States has some of top H4XOR's in the world. The NSA actually hires people to do stuff to other govmt's.

Re:U of "C" doesn't teach "C"

[xenocide2]

I donno if you attended U of P or not, but functional languages are on their way in, and C++ out. One of the biggest promoters of C++ was microsoft's interfaces, and they're pushing C# now.

OCaml may not win the war, but its certainly not a bad language. It has a large and stable set of tools. It has a runtime interpreter, a byte code compiler and interpreter, and a native code compiler. It supports most unix platforms and x86 for windows. A version is being developed by microsoft for MSVS.NET called F#. Now maybe Haskell will win after all with its seeming appeal, but OCaml is hardly a joke.

Actually, looking at your user stats, it seems you attended Ohio State University. They seem to have recently converted to Java, though I'm not sure what the language used to be. Just realize that an if statement works the same in all languages, and you'll do fine.

Re:Resume

[mrpotato]

I have a deeper understanding of the TCP/IP protocol suite than anyone in their right mind could want, I can code shellcode in my sleep, and writing a self-modifying virus that evades most signature-based scanners is something far from impossible now.

Bullshit bullshit? Bullshit, bullshit bullshit bullshit, bullshit!

Bullshit, bullshit bullshit...

Re:Hacking ethics

[jmccay]

I know I will take a Karma hit for saying this but it seems to fit after I read the article you presented.
One thing your article doesn't mention is the morals that can be put on a child when growing up within some families that enforce and stress a set of values. Take Christianity for instance. There is a set of rules that clearly define what is write and wrong. If the parents then follow and enforce these rules, then the kid will have more of a moral sense than the kids mentioned in the article. If the parants done enforce these rules, or they let children be influenced by society's influence that there is not really any right or wrong, then the kid won't have a developed moral values.
Society today hasn't been presenting morals like they used to in the past. If you look back a few decades, there were certain moral values that were presented and expected to be followed. Today you see what seems to be an attitude of everything goes, and it isn't until someone does something seriously wrong that society tries to impose any moral values. Everything is presented as ok or the perosn is considered a victim of their circumstances.
If society, and the entertainment industry in particular, were to start presenting and enforcing a set of moral values, then the next generation (not current teenagers) might grow up with more morals defined at an earlier age.
You see kids with a more defined set of moral values in third world countries where these values are necessary to live. I once watch a show on some tribal people of South America, and a child of no more than 8 years old was hacking away at a at a log and stopped immediated when his tolder brother walked by so he wouldn't hit the child.
Studies and articles like these only show how far we have gone astray from the core set of values that once prevailed Western Society. Unfortunately, if nothing is done to change this, then the eventually outcome in several generations is anarchy and everything is excepted.
Leading this charge into anarchy is the liberals who push their liberal agenda to push society's morals envelope. For the liberals, there is no end. There is no point where they can say, "we are here". Where they will stop pushing an agenda because they have finished. Each following generation has to one-up the previous generation and push the new boudries set by the previous generations. Look at today's shock musicians compared to those of the 80s.