Empowering Ethical Hacking Education with Generative AIs: A ChatGPT-Infused Curriculum

The last several years have witnessed a blossom of generative AI technologies with wide applications from business to healthcare. As revealed recently, generative AI tools can be incorporated in cybersecurity practices as both offensive and defensive vectors. This paper represents an initiative to empower Ethical Hacking (EH) education with ChatGPT-infused curriculum. As the first attempt of this nature, the proposed curriculum design has a few major innovative features. First, our design identifies and incorporates four ChatGPT-inspired EH areas including ChatGPT-powered Attack, ChatGPT-powered Defense, ChatGPT-powered Security Tasking, and ChatGPT-rooted Security. Second, our design is aligned with major EH certifications to prepare students to be industry ready. Third, we tackle both physical constraints (e.g., budget and space) and technical constraints (e.g., teaching offensive skills in compliance with campus policies), resulting in a cost-effective and IT-compliant design. Fourth, our design identifies and presents a course flow that integrates the diverse topics and ad hoc techniques for EH. Additionally, we discuss students’ performance and feedback on the design, and share learned lessons, with the hope of enlightening similar endeavors of other institutions.