On a winter’s afternoon, sunshine poured into the north room of a Beijing traditional courtyard house. Only the sound of typing on a keyboard and quiet discussion could be heard from this large room, where twelve young men and women are dealing with complex code on their screens and computer programming.

They are going to finish their six-month training to become professional "white hat hackers" and work for a domestic professional Internet security platform.

Having 18 years of experience in the Internet security industry, Wang Yingjian knows the huge demand for talented hackers for the domestic network security market. In 2002, Wang started his own IT business and funded the establishment of a "white hat hacker" school six months ago. Wang has spent more than 3 million yuan on training his students.

The recruitment is open to the whole country. Wang only selected 30 trainees with 100 applicants per place and offered them free classes for six months. He named the class "Legend". All students have to supply is the determination to deal with the high-intensity learning and intense elimination system.

Wang Yingjian hired more than 30 front-line supervisors in the industry to give lectures to the trainees. Every day, students receive 10-12 hours of training, including hacker attack and defense permeation, security analysis, loophole mining and intelligent hardware.

Wang and his team set up a monthly elimination system. Finally only 15 students could survive and are offered jobs at a domestic Internet company's network security platform.

"Our graduates can have a job with an annual salary of over 200,000 yuan. Their income will increase year by year with good prospects,” Wang added. It is reported that the annual income of the country's top security personnel today can reach one million yuan. Even freelancer white hat hackers could earn several thousand yuan a month by submitting loophole reports to the platform.

Wang Yingjian hopes that more and more young men and women could be part of the "white hat" group.

Hats off to the white hats. These hackers, who break into computer networks and digital devices to find loopholes before the bad guys do, have led to some of the most significant advances in securing the online world. Their findings have reshaped the way e-mail accounts, credit card numbers, and even ATMs and medical devices are protected from cyber-criminals.