Just like most people have already said, most my knowledge has been self taught, but what I have learned in school so far has definitaly helped me to be able to teach my self this kind of stuff... I have taken a bunch of c++ classes, and that has helped me learn other languages that are useful (PERL, JavaScript and so on). Also as said before experiance is (in my opinion is AWESOME) I have learned so much from doing Co-Ops. Granted I have been lucky because I got a Co-Op working at a company where my dad works, but the best advise I can give is find a co-op somewhere and pick everyone's brain. Just the other day we were testing out the exploit with the Cisco Routers seeing what all the protocals that would crash them before we applied the patch to fix it. My boss came and got me because I know c++ and we went to town testing it. Find out what you can from other people and then find ways of breaking things (that are yours or you have permission to break) and when you break it figure out how to fix it.