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I have always been told that a good sec mgr will know (or be familiar with) a plethora of languages, but especially C. Why is that? What does it help with?
Also, is assembly language really good to know.....i am going to take a class at a local comm college anyway, was just wondering what experienced programmers might think...
thanks....eric
I think C and assembly are good to know. When you understand them you understand what's going on at a very low level, especially with assembly. This will help you a lot if you get into finding vulnerabilities and writing Proof of Concept exploits. Also, if you're going to be writing programs to run on *nix, I think C is one of your best bets (I know some will disagree with me here, but this is my opinion. There are some things you may not want to touch with C with a ten foot pole though). If you already know some java or anything like that, for me the transition to C was really smooth, but I had a class for both. I think some other people in my classes had problems though, so it could have just been me. Anyways, if you're taking a class that's great. I've always picked up things best when taking a class that covers them. I have a hard time making myself learn stuff when I don't have deadlines to enforce me learning it. So I think I answered your question with my opinion and I hope it's helpful. Also, if it wouldn't be too overwhelming you may want to give perl a look. It's not too complex for most things. Good luck.
thanks, that actually answered a couple questions that i hadn't asked yet......thanks again.....eric
Adding to h3r3tic's post, I believe C is great to know as the majority of programs (including the kernel) in Linux are coded in C.
The whole point with this is that traditionally SysAdmin's would fix any bugs and security holes by hand and patch their own server, then submit patches to bugtraq or something along the lines.