Too few people in the world understand technology. Of those, the vast majority don't do anything creative with it. I would put myself in this category. A few people are extraordinarily creative and come up with the exploits we read about in the news. Let's say you're a competent programmer with minimal prior exposure to security. What should you read/do to learn how to see and engineer these kinds of exploits? I don't want to be Picasso, I just want to learn how to paint so I understand how he does it. For the record, I'd say a working hands-on knowledge of this should inform the design of any system. Is it a person-to-person oral tradition? Is it on some private message boards somewhere? Text files? There used to be 2600 Magazine, does anyone still read that? Maybe it's all of the above. Where is the best place for somebody smart to start reading/inspecting/programming and quickly learn what matters?