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Is your skin a pallid grey from all-night assembly language authoring sessions? Think living on cold pizza, Cool Ranch Doritos and diet Fresca sounds cool? The Hacker Academy might be just the place for you!

The Chicago, IL-based school for aspiring IT security "good guys" opened for registration on November 1, with classes beginning in early December.

The Hacker Academy offers two possible courses of study for would-be "white-hat" hackers, both in five-day certificate form, the Certified Ethical Hacker program, and the Certified Security Analyst program. Both programs will be offered in four US cities: Chicago, Seattle, Orlando and Washington DC.

According to Aaron Cohen, president of the Academy, the courses not only teach the basics of technology's role in security through hardware, software and other gear, but also the human element - social engineering and the like. "Too much of security training still concentrates on only technology and not on the people themselves," Cohen said.