We teach how hackers think. They learn the uses and abuses of software like Big Brother and AntiSniff, and fuel up at websites like Geektools and CompanySleuth. They also practice ominous-sounding skills like session hijacking, password decoding, and zone transfers. The instructors are mostly practitioners who spend the majority of their time coming head to head with security problems. The company does not hire reformed hackers to teach.
Students type and hack along with the instructor during class on laptops.
Students are supposed to confine their hacking practice to the network set up in the classroom, but they are often eager to pry into their own companies' systems. And occasionally, students do break the rules by testing their newfound skills on more-challenging targets. It wasn't more than a couple hours before we started getting calls that they'd traced it back to us. If there is any company that should know what's happening on its computer system, it is Foundstone. Each key typed at every laptop is logged.