No they are not. There are plenty of ex-hackers and IT majors who can do just as good of a job. Do not reward the people that break the law and cost people their freedoms.

Hiring hackers to protect systems is something that happened in the 90s when hackers were the experts. Nowadays, there is much more competition, and people are a lot smarter.

IT grads are neither taught how to defend a system from attacks, nor how to attack a system. This is true at least at my university, which is in the top 20 in the world.

Hiring hackers is the most sensible option for securing a nterwork. A company should of course steer away from the hackers that do a lot of harm, but (apart from taking credit card data) that is not these hackers. Taking email addresses is fairly minor in the grand scheme of things. Apart from their attacks on Sony, all of these attacks are just to grab some attention and point out flaws in the systems.

My sarcasm meter didn't go off on this one but given the exclamation point I don't discard the possibility of you being sarcastic on t his comment. Just in case though I will cover my bases here. There is a difference between hackers and crackers. Hackers are productive while crackers are counter-productive and lawless. Examples given here http://cybercoyote.org/security/av-hacker.htm and also here http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/security/hackers-and-crackers-a-lesson-in-etymology-and-clear-communication/4237.

The PSN hack started a trend.

Yeah that gaming security which safeguards information of thousands or in some cases millions of customers information is pretty fucking easy to get. But I don't know, good on Nintendo for rebuking the hackers, wonder if MS will come under attack too, or are they the ones hiring the hackers? It's a hack within a hack... within a hack. Mindblown.

Did anyone guess that Bethesda would be next?

http://gamrfeed.vgchartz.com/story/86812/hackers-attack-bethesda-websites/

But whats going to happen when theres no games companys left to hack?! Think of the children won't somebody think of the children!!

anyway good job hackers your all now ten times cooler but still nobody comes round to spend time with you

Nothing is cool about hacking it's against the law and being evil is uncool these hackers one day will be brought to JJJJJJJJJJJJJJUSTICE!..... OK not for a while but they'll eventually be captured by the long arm of the LAW......... OK maybe not but they'll still losers in real life so.... Justice has been served!