A Special Needs Class

A Special Needs Class
George Smith, 2003-06-02

The University of Calgary's new course in virus-writing begs the question: is it a cheap publicity stunt or just boneheaded educating?

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A Special Needs Class 2003-06-02
Anonymous

What a silly article. You could have just summarized the whole thing into one sentence, "i know lots about virus-writer stereotypes, and a few old-school titles and names. i'm cooler than you"...oh wait, that's two sentences. You make fun of the course, but you don't bring up any points about it, yo...

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A Special Needs Class 2003-06-02
blacklight

I wouldn't get melodramatic over the fact that this course is being offered at Calgary. I have some solid doubts that any of the major US universities will be offering such a course due to concerns over substantial legal liability, if nothing else. However, a case could be made that carefully select...

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A Special Needs Class 2003-06-02
Anonymous

With all due respect, how can you hope to fight crime if you don't know how it is committed? Would you rather that anti-virus efforts' best source of talent was in-from-the-cold malicious virus writers?

Your lack of understanding of what's really going on is striking. Rather than realizing this...

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The comments I submitted to comp.risks on the subject 2003-06-02
Nicholas Weaver (3 replies)

I have to strongly second Klaus Brunnstein's comments in comp.risks concerning http://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/News/virus_course.html

As a researcher who has analyzed existing worm strategies and developed novel strategies (warhol worms, metaserver worms) and plausible defenses, I fin...

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The comments I submitted to comp.risks on the subject 2003-06-03
Anonymous

I don't know. I could probably disagree with that.
Saying you know how a worm/virus is created because you read a book on it, is quite a bit different then actually having gone through the process of writing one. I think it could create a good background for those wanting to write anti-virus sof...

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The comments I submitted to comp.risks on the subject 2003-06-03
Anonymous

I'd probably be more inclined to share your viewpoint if you stepped down from your lofty perch and ran spell check before you made your post....

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The comments I submitted to comp.risks on the subject 2003-06-04
Anonymous

Thank you for showing off your knowledge in this subject although you impressed me for a moment with your wealth of knowledge you tend not to elaborate on the reasoning why this course should not be offered. ...

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A Special Needs Class 2003-06-02
Anonymous (1 replies)

If I ever meet that professor... I'll pop him a good one in the nose. It will be his introduction to Corrupted Social Practices.

...

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A Special Needs Class 2003-06-03
Anonymous

that would not be smart you would put in jail...

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A Class of De-Bunking Bullsh1t 2003-06-03
Phat PhuCk Kluley (1 replies)

I think it's great, the sooner people realise and learn that virused and the anti-virus industry is nothing more than smoke and mirrors, the better.

The inner cabal of the AV sector would have everyone believe the a virus and what it does is some unbelieveably complicated computing and that only ...

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A Class of De-Bunking Bullsh1t 2003-06-04
Anonymous

Kids do not write viruses. Perhaps one in a billion possess the knowledge to do so but the skill required to write this type of code are limited to well educated/industry experienced computer brains. Hollywood leads us to believe kids write worms and other viruses but the reality is they don't. Ki...

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Virii have been invented under Unix as a GAME 2003-06-03
gilbertf@netbsd-fr,org

What is virii today was, in the past, a game under Unix called "core wars". The viruses were a game under Unix, where people entered competition inside a machien for his/her code survival.

This whole affair is bullshit. Checking history and what the virii have been before explains it's always bee...

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Little Red Book has been used too. Ahem. 2003-06-11
Anonymous

*sigh*...

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