Increases knowledge of how to stop malicious hackers

By teaching a course on hacking, the Virginia Tech CS department would increase knowledge of how to prevent malicious hackers from breaking into a system. Many believe that in order to catch a crook, one must think like one also. This does not mean that one should act on those thoughts, but rather, to use them in his/her advantage. If a course on hacking was taught at Virginia Tech, many students would benefit from the knowledge. This is evident in the scenario, because a student could have gotten a job. The student would get to see first hand what he/she would need to try to prevent in a system of their own.

Position: Pro

Ignore the problem and it will go away?

Supporting:

Personnel working in security are taught how a criminal acts.
"Much easier to block holes in a system if you know how hackers try to find them." (James Archer, CS 3604 debates)
Already train people with more harmful skills--police, military.
"...people trained to protect, that subsequently do harm with their training. Wouldn't help to disallow training in armed combat, for then the criminals would automatically have the upper hand." (Robert Stewart , CS 3604 debates)
"Knowledge of how to hack does not compel one to go into the world and hack into systems for harm, any more than knowledge of how to use a fire arm compels a person to use it for harm." (Robert Stewart , CS 3604 debates)
College student can learn and benifit by understanding how hackers do things.

Position: Pro

Follow the IEEE/ACM codes!

Supporting:

..., and to disclose promptly factors that might endanger the public or the environment
...to assist colleagues and co-workers in their professional development and to support them in following this code of ethics.
Give comprehensive and thorough evaluations of computer systems and their impacts including analysis of possible risks.

Position: Con

There is always that one student...

Supporting:

Possibility of that one student who uses his knowledge of hacking to do bad.
People browsing course catalog will think Tech is teaching people to be criminals.

Opposing:

"Virginia Tech should not be censoring classes to make sure one student doesn't use information to commit a crime." (Ryan Cutter, CS 3604 debates)
"One to do harm, but the rest to prevent it..." (Cullen Morris, CS 3604 debates)
If a student wanted to hack, they could easily get a book or surf the web and find the information.
Given a choice between personal research and formal training, most will choose the latter.

Position: Con

Prevention is different from action!

Supporting:

Big difference between teaching people how to hack and teaching them how to stop hackers.
"One would not teach intricate methods of how to write the worst algorithms to teach students to write good ones." (Michael Davis, CS 3604 debates)

Opposing:

Works for the short term preventions, but not for long term.
Hackers' skills increase and the programmer's skills in preventing them increase at a slower rate.
They have no foundation on which to base hacking skills in order to improve them.

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