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By Tony Hallett, 25 April 2000 00:15

NEWS Hackers are alive and well - and hard at work within your company. But these people can be the best way of ensuring your security systems are water-tight. This comes on the back of news last week that a group of high-profile hackers had teamed up to form a 'legitimate' IT security company. Winn Schwartau, president of Interpact, said: "The industry may be suspicious, but every major company out there has hackers on its staff - that's who does the programming, that's who keeps their system alive, that's who runs their networks right now." But despite the growing band of hackers who are joining the mainstream security industry, some experts believe the corporate world won't benefit because the best will keep a low profile. Kent Browne, a vigilante hacker known for running 'condemned.org', said: "If everybody knows who the hackers are they get hounded by the media. If they're doing things that are in a grey area or are illegal, law enforcement is going to go after them - and you can't get on the Internet from jail, because you're no longer a hacker - you're a criminal." The image of a typical hacker is no longer relevant. Sir Dystic, from Cult of the Dead Cow - best known for unleashing the Back Orifice program in 1998 - told Silicon.com: "Granted, there are plenty of skinny, pimply-faced hackers, but the truth is they are from as many walks of life as any other group of people. They just tend to be good at manipulating systems and good at figuring things out." For more on the issue of using hackers to protect corporate networks, see this week's News in View in our Systems Security channel (http://www.silicon.com/a37116 ). For related news, see:
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