Comment by analogwzrd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by analogwzrd | Hacker News Reader

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I almost graduated (switched programs) from a graduate school cybersecurity program. They tried making the program "interdisciplinary" which essentially meant that they dumbed down the technical classes so that non-technical undergraduate degrees could pass them.

I tried to put together a team of students to compete in one of MITRE's cybersecurity competitions, but struggled to get other students to create SSH keys so that they could get access to the competition server. Not hack into the server, just follow instructions that I gave them to create keys and give me the public ones so that they could log in and participate.

The industry has a similar problem that the military does: It's very difficult to take non-technical people and train them to be cybersecurity professionals, much less hackers.

You need to start with an engineering background, and it almost has to be electrical or computer engineering, or at least computer science. Of those people with that background, hacking in particular is a type of thinking, problem solving, and mentality that not everyone has.

If you want to defend, attack, or manipulate cyber infrastructure you need an understanding of how that infrastructure is designed and operates. An engineering background will at least give you the building blocks for that.

Can we say that Technical vs. Non-Technical in this space isn't so much about formal credentials, as it is about putting in a lot of time to learn about many relevant things, hands-on and probably exploratory?

The person whose only degree is Art school dropout, but who's logged many hours coding personal projects, running their own Linux or BSD machines, playing with networking, tweaking a game binary, etc., will wipe the floor with more-credentialed others, at a lot of real-world computer technical stuff.

Compared to person with a Engineering degree, or even a Computer Science degree-- but who spent no time outside of classwork, Leetcode memorizing, and a GitHub profile that was motivated only by FAANG-application coaching.

Those people who couldn't create their keypairs probably have fine raw material for becoming the kind of Technical person you need. But they're just having a pile of information shoveled at them in lectures and homework. And maybe they just wanted a job. And nobody told them that, if you want to be good, you have to put in the hours of quality unstructured learning time.

I don't put a huge emphasis on credentials. If someone is capable and talented, a degree doesn't change that. However, if they were able to complete an engineering degree (or insert analogous degree from any other area) then they have demonstrated an aptitude and capability that others have not.

The people who couldn't create their keypairs may have had the raw material, but they were trying perform at a level they weren't yet capable of - they couldn't google a simple task and follow instructions. They needed to go back to square zero and learn basics when they were in a graduate program. And because the graduate program was dumbed down, they weren't going to learn the basics in the program.

Yup. A hard science degree won't automatically point to someone gifted in the technical space, but it's a very helpful indicator that they have the aptitude.

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