Originally posted here by groovicus
Ok, you got me. Understanding teen sex and drug addiction are indeed pointless. I'm sure all the sociologists, scientists, and psychologists who have made careers out of studying that sort of thing will be comforted to know that their life's work is pointless.



No. At worst, they may know a couple of different ways to exploit a system by hand. At best, they know how to run a suite of tools to find the vulnerabilities. And keep in mind that vulnerability testing and pen testing are two very different things. And what is the so called hacker going to do when he/she finds a vulnerability? Are they going to rewrite your OS or application for you, or are they going to tell you to patch your system? I'll vote for the latter. In the case of the former, the reason they don't have to depend on the tools is that they understand the OS.



That argument is not valid. You are implying that only two kinds of people know how to secure a house. I would contend that architects, engineers, insurance adjusters, and building inspectors know quite a lot about home security also.




Hope you have lots of time
All the time in the world....

Pointless in the way that you put them, of course they are important subjects of study, in order to understand people, and how to prevent them, but that was obviously not what I was reffering to, I never said that this was a universal rule, that applied to all subjects. I obviously was reffering to security, not teen sex, drugs, hence the fact that I didn't use teen sex and drugs as my examples...

Of course, there are more than that, that is obvious, but beyond the point, and of course, not all hackers can secrue the holes they exploit. But, in my opinion, I would prefer a trained network admin who also know how to hack. Know your enemy, think like your enemy, be your enemy. You have to use their own techniques to learn how they get in if you want to stop them. Being a[good] hacker, one knows what network admins know

Any good hacker, doesn't have to use programs, and does know the OS. I'll say in all honesty, yes I am a hacker, but, it is one of the best ways to learn about computers, the OS, and securing your network and computer. Many of the exploits I found, and the ones I read about, are stuff most network admins and computer gurus don't know or think about. I have unlocked locked down networks for teachers, and logged into computers that were totaly logged out(admin and everyone), using nothing more than my understanding of the OS, any other network technition, would have no other choice than to reload the computer, or network, due to lack of this knowledge. That is why I say, I would rather have a hacker like me, who know both, as a network technition, as opposed to someone who is just a regular network technition.


For Tedob1, and phishphreek80, thanks, thats what I was wanting to know (at least some people here don't start pointless arguments...*cough*groovicus*cough*...ask a simple question, and you start arguing...)