Economics as the Solution to Cognitive Dissonance

The
University of Washington’s School of Computing and Engineering
is offering
a new course
on how to think like a security professional. The class looks very cool, but
look at the requirements:

Um, how many people do you know at the very TOP of infosec who:

1. is comfortable writing programs in C and Java from scratch, and

2. is comfortable writing and debugging assembler, and

3. is comfortable coding in UNIX using gdb, gcc, etc.

I mean like Bejtlich, Gula, Ranum, Roech, Parker, etc. Do they even qualify?
If so, how many of them? I understand that most people at some point
could do this — even me to some degree. But damn, not anymore. I think most
people learn assembler, Java, etc. and that stuff quickly atrophies unless
it’s part of your daily work.

Oh, and that’s just to get in to the class… You should see the final.
?

Anyway, I’m being silly. But the class does sound like it’d be cool. There’s
even a
course blog.

[
CSE 484: Computer Security
]