Understanding the mindset of a hacker and the likes of one may be useful to counter security attacks, but companies still object to hiring former, or even reformed, black hats.

According to Paul Ducklin, chief technical officer at Sophos, a good antivirus researcher or someone who works to weed out malicious code would need "far greater" skills than a black hat--a hacker who exploits IT security flaws for the primary purpose of inflicting damage.

At BusinessWeek.

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