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By Will Sturgeon, 29 May 2003 15:54

NEWS The anti-virus community has hit out angrily at Calgary University which this week announced plans to start running a course in virus writing for its computer science students. While the university claims it will be a vital development in educating the next generation of anti-virus experts the current generation is not convinced. Dr Jan Hruska, CEO of Sophos, sent out a clear warning to any students attending the course. "Don't bother applying for a job at Sophos," he said. "If you have written viruses you will be turned away." The issue has certainly united the anti-virus industry. David Emm, marketing manager for Network Associates' AVERT unit, said: "In the anti-virus industry there is an ethical trend. None of us would employ a former virus writer or anybody who has been involved in any kind of virus writing activity. Sophos' Hruska added: "[Student's taking this course] are of no use to us. The skills required to write good anti-virus software are far removed from those needed to write a virus. With 80,000 viruses in existence there can be no excuse for teaching students on how to create more." "The university's justification for this course is entirely misguided," added Hruska. Network Associates Emm added: "It's a bad idea. If you are trying to produce good programmers then teaching them to write viruses is really not the way to do. "It is potentially incredibly dangerous. Even with safeguards in place to ensure people don't take viruses on disks out of the secure environment I'm not sure it is a risk worth taking." Even the university's claims that the theory part of the course will provide valuable insight into the mind of the virus writer didn't impress Emm. "I'm not sure that there is going to be any benefit from supposedly getting into the psyche of the virus writers - I can't see that it is necessary in fighting them," he said. "For example, I wouldn't need to know why somebody does graffiti to know that it's a problem and to know how to combat it." Commenting on the story yesterday, David Perry, global director of education for anti-virus software maker Trend Micro, said: "I don't see any educational value at all. You don't send somebody out to shoot someone so they understand what happens when somebody gets shot." Whatever you think about this subject you must have an opinion one way or the other. Email your comments to editorial@silicon.com.