On the Morality of Teaching Students IT Crime Skills

A superficial introduction to the world of viruses, worms and other malware is often sufficient to get students dreaming about the potential power wielded by those technologies. One needs about a minute to teach them how to build a powerful Trojan Horse, how to distribute such a construction as targeted malware and how to monetise the few minutes they invested in such an effort. Such teaching is rewarding since it is one of the few examples where many students immediately apply their new skills to impress friends. Of course the intention is not to make them criminals, but to gain the deep understanding of issues that would otherwise require them to spent hours with books that discuss abstract concepts that often remains abstract.