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Would You Hire A Hacker?

Posted by timothy on from the depends-on-circumstances dept.

theodp writes "A German security company has divided opinion in the IT industry by offering a job to the teen charged with creating Sasser. Silicon.com asks its CIO Jury: Would you hire a hacker? and finds the jury split down the middle, with one IT Director saying doing so would be like hiring serial-killing doctor Harold Shipman to treat your ailing and aged mother."

3 of 466 comments (clear)

  1. No, no, no! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's not hacker! It's cracker. Hackers create, crackers destroy.

    -ESR (fake)

    Hacker != Cracker. How-to.

    1. Re:No, no, no! by ePhil_One · · Score: 5, Informative
      Yeah, I don't think this kid is all too bright compared to a lot of other hackers. I mean, for one, he got caught.

      For another, he's clearly subject to certain moral lapses.

      I've been given this opportunity before, an applicant admited to hacking into a company to demonstrate his abilities and knowledge; they hired him. While I recognized his potential to help secure our network, could I trust him not to monitor peoples mail for his own amusement, access private data like salaries, "attack" computers of folks he didn't like, or otherwise cause trouble?

      It took a slam dunk "Hire him" to a long debate, we wound up not making an offer.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
  2. I did hire a hacker! by Offwhite98 · · Score: 4, Informative

    And he worked out great. We both had similar skills and were able to hammer out a lot of code. We do not work together anymore, but I still work with hackers. If you do not enjoy pulling things apart to see how they work and hack them to do new things you should not be writing software.

    --
    Brennan Stehling - http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/