The Virus Professor
The Virus Processor George Ledin is making computer software programmers angry. This man teaches his students how to create viruses and other nasty computer issues in his class. Grant Joy is a part of this whole virus, spam, and other detrimental programmes in an underground facility in California. Grant Joy can record user names, passwords, and credit card numbers. Thomas Fynan, also part of the group has been offering bulletin message from fake users. Joy and Fynan are not considered hackers though. They go to Sonoma State University and are being taught how to protect security on computers. George Ledin is showing these students how to get through an antivirus software.
The credit card companies as well as software companies that make the viruses are very unhappy about the whole class. They say it is like AQ Khan who sold nuclear technology to North Korea. While the students and professor don’t seem to think they are doing anything wrong, consumers are just as angered by the process. Ledin states that his students do not mean harm; that instead he is trying to come up with ways to stop the actual hackers. It’s a lot like biology, according to Ledin. They have specimens they are working with and in this case they are able to infect the computers in order to get a solution. They are working towards a defence plan in order to block any offense by the hacker.
Ledin furthers states that we shouldn’t shy away from learning something that is very important to a lot of individuals. The shoppers who use their credit card numbers online to buy things should be safe, and how can they be safe if the technology is old or if the technology can be broken through? It is not a matter of damaging society in the class; it is about repairing the damage caused by the hackers to improve society. So far the federal government has seen fit to not offer financial support to Ledin directly; however he does get the support from the University.
Until someone puts a stop to Ledin’s class we can expect him to continue his instruction. Hopefully during that time a real hacker will not be infiltrating the class stealing credit card numbers for real use. For consumers it means we should be very careful where we use our credit cards and personal information online to avoid any problems.