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Would You Hire A Hacker?
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."
That's not hacker! It's cracker. Hackers create, crackers destroy.
-ESR (fake)
Hacker != Cracker. How-to.
[O]ne IT Director [said] doing so would be like hiring serial-killing doctor
A little extreme on the allegories, aren't we? Virus writing is not exactly like taking out a knife and killing someone. (Although it may result in the shutdown of systems that support people's lives. I'd tend to blame this on the idiots who use Windows for those systems, though.)
As for hiring him, I think my answer would be "maybe". I certainly wouldn't hire him because of his transgressions, but rather despite them. Basically, everyone should be entitled to a second chance. If this employer believes that the guy has a lot of talent and is repentant of his past deeds, then give him another shot! He'll have to try damn hard to remove the stigma from his deeds, but try hard enough and he might just turn his life around.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
It'd be more like hiring a doctor who was convicted of illegal cloning experiments to work on alternatives to organ transplants.
doing so would be like hiring serial-killing doctor
Well, if he's good with a knife..
Honestly though, if a hacker has payed his debt to society and now wants to help businesses prevent what he was doing(Kevin Mitnick), why not let them? Having the most knowledgeable person for the job might just save you from being hacked by someone else--as long as you can trust the person.
Boxing Equipment Reviews
What a loaded question?
Would I hire a worm-writing kid? No.
Would I hire a gray-hat security genius? Absolutely.
A security company might benefit from his experience, or even just the marketting angle "the best hackers work for us!"
In the field I'm in, he'd be a liability. We do government stuff, relating to law enforcement, and while we're not a bunch of angels, we don't want any skeletons in our closet either.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
It might be nice while they're working for you, but if you piss them off(who hasn't been an employer and had an employee pissed off?) then they have inside knowledge about your company and the ability to hack.
On the other hand, I wouldn't consider these VBS writers "hackers". They are just glorified script kiddies. Don't reward that behavior.
Chris
Fear the day that you ever have to let him go.
I think it would depend on the QUALITY of the hack. A poorly written hack that breaks out in the wild, that causes unintended results would prevent me from hiring said person.
However, if the hack is an elegant piece of code, that does exactly and only what the author indended would be something I would consider.
Originality also would count. The creative nature of the hack would also weigh in. This prevents script kiddies from modifying existing hacks from the "application" for the job.
In otherwords, I would evaluate each hack and make judgements on the over all skill, novelty and execution of the hack, all skills needed for any programming job.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Note: I'm not saying that this chump is the best programmer around, I'm sure he's not. But if he's a great man for the job and can think of things that you and I won't, then I'm on.
Berto
There are PLENTY of information security white hats that are just as talented, if not more talented, than the black hats. If we are truly talking about hiring a "black hat cracker". Even if they were exceptionally skilled it would depend on the individual.
:)
They commited a computer crime. That is a liability, not an asset. All in all their benefits as a skilled IT professional would have to outweigh their liabilities (being busted for a computer crime). It is a factor that goes into the equation. I would say that in most cases it would be enough to lean me towards not hiring them. I think its a pretty serious thing to hack someone elses system. There are PLENTY of ways to make a name for yourself in a white hat way. Writing papers, studying info sec and staying on top of the field and becoming a noted voice in the communities is one. Ultimately if you need negative publicity to be known (and or hired) your just being lazy
Jeremy
The FBI hired Frank Abagnale Jr. as a counterfeit specialist and it turned out to be a good thing. Why? Because he was just a freaking teenage KID that happened to be misguided through lack of maturity. If this teen hacker was given a little direction and purpose with his life then he could steer everything completely around.
I can't believe that comment about hiring him being similar to hiring a serial killer as a doctor. The director that spoke that comment is an idiot.
I think I would look at what type of hacker they are.
Is it someone who knows systems inside and out and enjoys toying with them? Then definitely yes.
Is it a script kiddie who just took someone elses work and capitalized on it? Definitely not.
The issue is not about elitism, it's about attitude, someone who has gone to the effort to learn something and apply it is in a whole different world than someone who is so socially mal-adjusted they feel the need to tweak the latest worm to say "I RULEZ" and sends it back out.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -RAH
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/
Use of the term 'hacker' here is a misnomer. Would I hire someone who has a broad technical ability and excels in why things do and don't work? Absolutely. But allow me to go on a little old-man rant here (and hell, I'm in my 20s): viruses these days aren't what they used to be.
In the 1980s-1990s, you could pick up a copy of 2600 and read the code for a relatively complicated polymorphing boot sector virus -- complicated because it took a good knowledge of assembler, specific system calls, the boot process on a PC, etc., among other things. With a few tweaks, it would be slow-incubating, but deadly.
The internet has changed the way we deal with security, because no longer is the question "How clever is the virus?" so much as it is "How cautious is the user?" Example: the "Microsoft Office 2004 Beta" for Mac appeared on P2P networks a few months ago. When run, it deleted the contents of your user folder. Devastating, yes, but nothing I couldn't do myself without programming knowledge. So the 'virus' wasn't clever, tricky, or even unique in function, except for the method of delivery, which was social in nature -- not technical.
The same applies to security holes in your OS. Whether the hole should be patched is another discussion, but taking the obvious routes through those holes to bring down computers isn't particularly noteworthy. If everyone at my office has VNC installed without a password, and I go delete their My Documents folder at noon today, am I a hacker? No. I'm just a prick.
So when you ask, "would I hire a hacker?" Yes.
But when you ask, "would I hire someone who creates/uses something annoying and not that special; requiring a moderate level of programming skill if at all; that relies on the user to activate it or a major security flaw in the OS?" Absolutely not. These kids' salaries should be going to sociologists who can better analyze group behavior, and real coders, not scr1pt k1dd13z.
It is not about skill or knowledge, it is about "Can I trust this person?". If someone can write a virus, that might demonstrate good knowledge. Releasing the virus shows the person either did not think about the damage they would make, or worse, they did not care. I would not want someone like that in my company or organization. I happen to think those kinds of people belong in jail, because sooner or later they will do something as stupid as the common thug.
Come and say hi. http://forum.penpals.com/index.php
mmm honey
I give up, what sort of stuff do you do at National Endowment for the Arts?
It's amazing to me what kind of gullible suckers the mods are around here.
Would I hire com Adrian Lamo? Yeah.
It depends a lot on the intent of the attack and what was done once it was successful. Also on the personal morals of the individual.
I do security
Hear hear! I can't stand how many people keep making this simple mistake. By calling destructive computer criminals "hackers," you're bringing down everybody who codes for the love of it. Lots of us have been calling ourselves hackers for years, only now to get painted with this negative brush.
I don't expect the mainstream press to know any better, but this is Slashdot. Can we please try to keep our definitions straight?
A hacker is a skilled, passionate computer programmer -- nothing more.
A person who commits malicious computer crimes is a biscuit. Like those evil software pirates who walk around with those parrots on their shoulders: "Polly want a biscuit!" Get it right, people.
Breakfast served all day!
one IT Director saying doing so would be like hiring serial-killing doctor Harold Shipman to treat your ailing and aged mother.
Being that Shipman is dead, it would be really stupid to hire him for anything.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
All you script kiddies out there who are drooling, be warned that you probably wouldn't have a chance in hell of getting a TS/SCI security clearance.
Move along, certainly nothing to see here. BTW I second the post that the Mod's are gullible today. Of all days that I have no points.
"We need a fourth law of Robotics: Stop Fingering My Wife"
It sounds exciting working for the NRA.
Hmmm, how many other organizations start with "N" and end in "A" that have nothing to do with computers?
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I believe his actions speak for the quality of his charector.
We had a lesser, but similar situation at the company where I work. This guy applied for a programming job, and his entire coding experience consisted of writing spamming tools.
He'd openly, and seemingly without shame, listed all his spammer tools on his CV (resume for you over-the-pond types)
I desperately tried to get the guy doing the recruiting to hire him, just so I'd get an opportunity to beat the shit out of the filthy bastard.
The IT Director who made the Shipman comparison should be fucking fired. Just what kind of values does a man have when he equates a mass murderer with a teenage computer virus writer? My god, the kid is exactly that, a kid! He isn't a violent drug crazed sociopath, he's doing what many kids do, i.e. messing around to see what he can do and how far he can go, with the exception that he got caught.
This kind of fanatic mentality, where a stupid fucking computer (or a song or movie on the internet) becomes more valuable than people's lives, is a sad testament to the state of our society.
You think I'm over the top? Why is it that people who download songs from the internet get punished harder than the executives of corrupt and failing corporations?
If you give someone a chance, after he or she has messed up, especially as a teen, they might or might not do something useful with their lives. But if you dismiss them outright, you are condemning them for the rest of their lives.
Way to go fuckers.
Why on earth should we assume that someone who can break security has the slightest knowledge of how to fix security? I can break regular glass with a rock, but have no clue how to make shatter-proof glass.
Keeping to computer security: Say a particular system has 5000 current, undiscovered ways of being broken into (or just broken). Breaking into it requires finding one of them. But you have to find 2500 of them just to have a 50% chance of finding the one the hack.. err... cracker finds. If a typical passibly decent hacker can find 5 holes, he'd have over a 95% chance of finding one of the ones the security team, that found 2500, missed.
Yes, I wouldn't hire a computer criminal because of his ethical problems. I also wouldn't hire him because if he actually thinks that breaking into a system makes him qualified to work securing systems, he clearly knows nothing about securing systems.
I'm a big believer in second chances and turning over leaves, but we are talking about a person who has demonstrated a weakness of moral fiber.
Whether or not the individual is good(skillwise) or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is how one goes about redeeming themselves in the eyes of the community.
I suppose it comes down to your company's comfort level. It is alot like the transition homes where families take in young ex-criminals to help give them a second chance. Sometimes, you honestly see great things come from second chances. Other times, you get a family who is robbed by the one they entrusted.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to write a replicating piece of code. It doesn't take alot of brains to take an existing one and modify it either.
Which brings one to wonder why hire someone whose only done these things?
The only apparent benefit is to use him to get at other virii writers through association online and by monitoring his access and communications. By hiring him, they increase his profile and will likely draw the attention of script kiddies who will get caught by the firm.
Otherwise, such a hire only risks stock prices and makes the company liable for future damages.
Winged Power Photography
Would I hire a hacker? The answer is absolutely; hire someone who learns on their own without some instructor holding their hand.
Hackers have the best problem solveing, and deductive reasoning skills of anyone in the IT industry not to mention attention to detail. One could only be so lucky to have one on staff (and you probably do).
Don't get me wrong, there are definitly milicious hackers (crackers) who find joy in compromising, stealing, and destroying systems and networks, but to be honest, most of them do not get cought, and if they do, one needs to wonder, how good are they anyway if they got cought.
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