Corporate security and IT professionals got a chance last week to think like hackers so they could learn how to better prevent unauthorized users from gaining access to their networks. During the 45-hour class, Ernst & Young security professionals take students . . .
Corporate security and IT professionals got a chance last week to think like hackers so they could learn how to better prevent unauthorized users from gaining access to their networks. During the 45-hour class, Ernst & Young security professionals take students step-by-step through all the ways hackers try to subvert mission-critical servers and network configurations.

Using dual-bootable NT/Linux laptops and an accompanying network setup for practicing subversive attacks, attendees were taught a new bag of tools and tricks to help them understand how hackers identify IP addresses, collect information about the systems they want to compromise and exploit weaknesses without being noticed.

Students spent half their course time conducting hands-on exercises using the techniques they learned from lectures to compromise three self-contained Windows NT boxes.

Among the attendees at last week's class was Jason Buckley, security officer for corporate IT security at Boston-based CCBN Inc., which builds, manages and hosts the investor relations sections of Web sites for more than 2,500 public companies.

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