[dingody]

I don’t entirely agree with the author’s viewpoint on “Hacking is Cool.” There was a time when I thought similarly, believing that “finding some system vulnerabilities is just like helping those system programmers find bugs, and I can never be better than those programmers.” However, I gradually rejected this idea. The appeal of cybersecurity lies in its “breadth” rather than its “depth.” In a specific area, a hacker might never be as proficient as a programmer, but hackers often possess a broad knowledge base across various fields.

A web security researcher might simultaneously discover vulnerabilities in “PHP, JSP, Servlet, ASP.NET, IIS, and Tomcat.” A binary researcher might have knowledge of “Windows, Android, and iOS.” A network protocol researcher might be well-versed in “TCP/IP, HTTP, and FTP” protocols. More likely, a hacker often masters all these basic knowledge areas.

So, what I want to say is that the key is not the technology itself, nor the nitty-gritty of offense and defense in some vulnerabilities, but rather the ability to use the wide range of knowledge and the hacker’s reverse thinking to challenge seemingly sound systems. This is what our society needs and it is immensely enjoyable.