Hacker Boot Camp

abb_road writes "Business Week sent a reporter to TechTrain's ethical hacker training camp, where, for $4,300, participants spend five days working towards ICECC's 'Ethical Hacker Certification.' The camp serves companies' increasing needs for home-grown white hats, and covers topics ranging from the non-technical (social engineering and policy creation) to code-level attacks (buffer overflows and sql injections). The tuition seems a bit steep for materials that, as the article notes, are 'freely available over the web'--but where else can you play hacking capture the flag?"

Comments

::groan:: Please make this go away.

[XorNand]

Is it just me, or does the very name "certified ethical hacker" seem like an utterly stupid, attention-whoring term? It reminds me of the kids who hang out on IRC asking "How do I hack someone's computer if I have their IP address?". People don't go to "certified ethicial arsonists" bootcamps, they study fire science at an accredited school.

It sounds like this bootcamp just teaches people a handful of tricks that can be used to impress hiring managers. (Mentioned in the article: The default MS SQL login is "sa" with no password. Well, that's tidbit is not going to do you much good if you're assesing any version of SQL Server released within the past six years.) Do they explain the difference between a frame, packet, and datagram? All specifics and no theory.