This is kind of exciting. This is taken from Kaspersky Lab's VirusList.

Canadian University Teaches Students How To Create Malware The course is intended to help stop computer viruses but many are not convinced and fear the opposite.

The controversial undergraduate course offered by the University of Calgary is called, "Computer Viruses and Malware" and will be taught for the first time this coming autumn. Students that take the class will learn how to create worms, viruses and trojan horses as well as learn about the legal, ethical and computer security issues that surround the computer virus problem. The logic behind the course being that in order to better fight viruses and malware, tomorrow's programmers need to better understand them.

The "Computer Viruses and Malware" course is the first of its kind in Canada and joins similar programs on the vanguard of this new approach to the battle against viruses and hackers. This past March, England's University of Leeds, in cooperation with the Microsoft corporation, announced its plans to train budding programmers in the art of writing malicious source code in a course entitled, "Secure Programming".

Dr. John Aycock, the professor teaching the University of Calgary course draws a comparison with how the medical field fights biological viruses, "Before you can develop a cure, you have to understand what the virus is and how it spreads. Why should combating computer viruses be any different?"

Not convinced is Graham Cluley, an anti-virus industry technology consultant who stated, "Should we teach kids how to break into cars if they're interested in becoming a policeman one day? One wonders if the university will be held legally and financially responsible if any of the viruses written on their course break out and infect innocent computer users."
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