Slashdot Mirror
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.
It'd be more like hiring a doctor who was convicted of illegal cloning experiments to work on alternatives to organ transplants.
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!!!!
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.
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.
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.
mmm honey
I give up, what sort of stuff do you do at National Endowment for the Arts?
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!
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 doesn't necessarily prove any talent at all.
It proves they go to their favorite hacker website, download some proof of concept code, and wrap some VBScript around it.
I wouldn't call Sasser a work of genious, but a work of pure assholery. He didn't invent something, or do it to prove a point. The point was proven, the exploit was known. He did it to be a 1337 h4x0r.
I think the fact that these teens exist is a result of their own stupidity. Guess what, you want to commit crimes for attention, it just might fuck your entire life up.
Try and get a job in retail with a shoplifting conviction. Try and get a job as a kindergarten teacher with an assault conviction. Try and get anywhere in politics with virually any conviction greater than a traffic violation.
Boo hoo for teens too stupid to realize actions have consequences, sometimes life long consequences. And I'm sick of people blaming "the education system" or "society".
This kid was mentally developed enough to know what he was doing was wrong, and did it anyways. He's lucky to be offered a job doing anything more technical than digging holes in the dirt.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!