“More than 20 students recently sat in a muggy room on the 12th
floor of a New York office building to learn how to hack into
Microsoft Windows NT and Linux systems. But it wasn’t an
underground session run by computer criminals; instead, these
students hoped to learn how to protect their computer systems and
E-commerce Web sites from attack.”
“The Ultimate Hacking class was taught by startup Foundstone
Inc., formerly Rampart Security Systems, which offers security
consulting services as well as classes on the tools of the hacker’s
trade. Foundstone, in Mission Viejo, Calif., has received $3
million in funding from Olympic Venture Partners.”
“”We have laptops for everybody with both Linux and NT, and
we bring our own server boxes that have been misconfigured or have
known vulnerabilities on them and then allow the students to break
into them,” says Stuart McClure, Foundstone’s president and
chief technology officer. “We want to train people to understand
what hackers do and how they do it, because that’s the only way
they can protect themselves. Know thy enemy.””