Slashdot Mirror
Pentagon Seeks a New Generation of Hackers
Hugh Pickens writes "Forbes reports on a new military-funded program aimed at leveraging an untapped resource: the population of geeky high school and college students in the US. The Cyber Challenge will create three new national competitions for high school and college students intended to foster a young generation of cybersecurity researchers. 'The contests will test skills applicable to both government and private industry: attacking and defending digital targets, stealing data, and tracing how others have stolen it. [...] The Department of Defense's Cyber Crime Center will expand its Digital Forensics Challenge, a program it has run since 2006, to include high school and college participants, tasking them with problems like tracing digital intrusions and reconstructing incomplete data sources. In the most controversial move, the SANS Institute, an independent organization, plans to organize the Network Attack Competition, which challenges students to find and exploit vulnerabilities in software, compromise enemy systems and steal data. Talented entrants may be recruited for cyber training camps planned for summer 2010, nonprofit camps run by the military and funded in part by private companies, or internships at agencies including the National Security Agency, the Department of Energy or Carnegie Mellon's Computer Emergency Response Team.'"
It's pointless to "study" computer security. By the time you're through, you get told "forget everything, it's outdated".
You're looking at a field here that reinvents itself every other month. What you knew 2 years ago is outdated and very near worthless today. 2 years ago, the big craze in security were bogus browser plugins and runtime packers. Nobody does it anymore, all security tools can easily identify and depack them. The thing now is the transition to true P2P updatable malware with digital signatures. Once this is achived, conficker will look like a toy.
Personally, I give it 3-6 months.
So it's not a matter of mindset. It's a matter of being outdated by the time you learned it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.