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Chinese Worm Creator Gets High-Paying Job Offer In Prison
martinsslaves writes "The recently imprisoned creator of China's worst computer virus ever (worm.whboy) has now been offered a job paying millions of yuan from his prison cell. He's actually been offered several, and one of the companies that has offered him the position of Technology Director was actually affected by his virus. The General Manager there now believes the virus writer may have just been 'led astray'. The media is reporting that author Li Jun originally wrote the virus due to frustrations over being jobless. 'So far, about 10 network companies across the country have offered jobs to Li, whom they regarded was a "precious genius," the report said citing Li's lawyer Wang Wanxiong. Li's cyber bug, which earned him about 145,000 yuan after selling it to other hackers from December 2006 to February this year, can prevent infected computers from operating anti-virus software and all programs using the "exe" suffix.'"
In the 80's if you got caught hacking, you might get some jail time, and get your gear confiscated, but often you were also offered a job.
Liberalism...the next best thing to thinking.
The more people like this get tremendous job offers, the worse I see things getting since they are ultimately being rewarded for their behavior.
To that end, instead of "stocks" in images and PDFs, I predict the next round will be resumes flying around!
(Oh and I for one welcome our burning joss stick wielding, cute and cuddly Asian overlor^W, um, IT guys...)
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<blockquote>can prevent infected computers from operating anti-virus software</blockquote>
Don't all viruses do that nowadays, seems like a standard practice to me.
<blockquote>and all programs using the "exe" suffix.</blockquote>
so.... how did windows boot?
:(
From the blurb: Li's cyber bug, which earned him about 145,000 yuan after selling it to other hackers from December 2006 to February this year, can prevent infected computers from operating anti-virus software and all programs using the "exe" suffix.'
Navidad did kind of the same thing but it seems to be a coding mistake more then the intended purpose of the virus.
Just for the record: I didn't read the article.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
the only real way to ensure security is to have it constantly challenged. that's a job. and this guy did a good job of doing that. thus, he earned the income
which means 2 things:
1. there is no security in an environment where the security doesn't get challenged and defeated every now and then. or get's challenged, and the fallout kept secret
2. go ahead and make virii and worms. just make damn sure the payload is harmless or simply annoying. if the worm this guy wrote did something really nasty, you can be sure he wouldn't be getting kudos and job offers
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The lesson to be learned from this is that crime pays.
Though I'm sure he would like them to believe he was led astray,
what if he wasn't and is just manipulating the authorities to get himself back online?
what are they going to do if he creates another worm, while in prison?
I would hope this is an unlikely scenario but it is one worth considering...
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...where he earns up to 7 cigarettes on a good day. I'm not sure what that would be here after cost-of-living adjustments, though.
TODO - Insert Creative/Witty Signature
Was the virus technically fantastic, or did he download a virus kit from the web and just modify it's name before releasing it?
He did this because he couldn't get a job? Maybe he should get a life instead.
1. Lose job.
2. In despair, write a Windows worm.
3. PROFIT.
4. Get caught, go to jail.
5. ???
6. PROFIT.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Sorry, but taking your discontent out on scores of innocent victims does not strike me as merely being led astray. At best, it shows a complete failure to consider the consequences of your actions. At worst, it shows that your personality is borderline sociopathic, in that you don't actually _care_ about the consequences of your actions.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I would think that rewarding someone who did this would simply invite others to repeat the performance. At first glance, it may seem that the price of imprisonment should be a sufficient deterrent. But the dude got five years in prison, and he now stands to make over $133,000 per year on his release. $133,000 a year is a heap of money in China. If you told me I could "play nice" and make less than $10,000 for most of the rest of my life, or I could instead spend five years in miserable conditions but not paying anything for room and board and then make $133,000 per year afterwards and live like a king, the choice would be pretty easy.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
The "West" learned in the 80s. You do NOT want those people in your security department. Yes, they have the skill, but they don't have the ethics. And that's the big deal here.
You will not get a job offer here for writing a virus. No reputable IT sec company will touch you with a 10 foot fiber cable. Yes, you obviously have the skill, but you lack the morals not to use it for what you've done.
What is really lacking in today's IT world is lectures and courses about the topic. Do you see many universities teach you something about malware? How to exploit a system? How to look for security holes? Yes, very controversial topic, but it's necessary. I mean, where are you supposed to learn that? Self study takes a long, long time, time you don't have in today's IT sec world where what you learn today is dead weight in a month. And, well, self study is usually only done by people who have an interest in applying that knowledge, and rarely for good...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's like you robbed a bank, but you did it so well the bank wanted to hire you as security to protect them.
and I was going to be getting that much money, I would totally change my name to Suk Maidong.
...prison attracts you!
You hire a guy with a record with of lashing out against the world when he meets with life's frustrations. What next? Do you offer him lifetime job security and rebuild your IT infrastructure every time he twitches?
People who write viruses and worms should be shot.
Considering the changes in the computer industry over the past 20 years, it should scare people that this sort of thing is going on right now. There have been an increasing number of hacking attempts from China, and there are also an increasing number of businesses that are based around infecting computers with spyware/adware.
As a result of this, paying hackers and cyber-terrorists(which is really what worm creators are) for their expertise in this sort of program is a VERY VERY bad thing. The culture in that part of the world is different from "western" nations, and as a whole tends to be more accepting of illegal activities(look at pirated software being sold on store shelves). Many people are worried about scams from Russia, but those are nothing compared to some of the scams that originate in Eastern Asia.
Excuse me while I go write a virus that will replace the boot sector on all windows-running computers with a small program that displays my resumé and contact information.
I thought this was a Communist country. What happened to "to each according to his needs?" Does a hacker need millions of yuan?
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In general, people do what they are incited to do.
If working within the system simply doesn't pay as well as working above it, then plenty of people will work above it. Whether or not this is "right" will not be very important to them.
Seems like such an individual would be very valuable to government espionage agencies...
I believe in fairness. Everyone needs to work productively. So yes, give this guy a job.
But only after he has spent MANY years in jail, and has reimbursed all the people who lost work and data directly resulting from the virus being on all the computers affected by this crime.
So if this criminal has written and released a bit of secret code that wipes out data a hard drive, then he (always a he) should be required to compensate for the cost of collecting and entering this data. He must also be responsible for loss of income and profit in all the companies infected by his virus code.
If he is still interested in coding after all the effort and expense that he must do to correct the bad effects of his deliberate action of writing and releasing a destructive virus, then he should be allowed to do so.
But not until all the compensation has been made. It doesn't matter if this criminal is a coding genius, we can always get the same results from having more ordinary people working on the same coding problem as a lone genius.
What I'm saying is that regardless of any individual's coding skills, if this individual causes millions of dollars of damage, he should not be allowed to work in this industry.
It's just not a Maoist communist country anymore. Deng Xiaoping changed everything.
Anyone else misread the title at first?
God spoke to me.
It's insightful/funny/sad, because it's true.
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When you're working with Mr Wang Wanxiong, you pick up some good tricks!
which is totally what she said
I'm just surprised this guy wasn't hired by their government. A cyber-attack would be a pretty good start to their next war, especially against their highly industrialized (and networked) neighbors. You could disrupt their economy for days (or weeks, depending on how good the worm is) before launching an actual attack and nobody could really counterattack right off the bat because they'd think it was just another random teenager in his basement up to no good...
Would he then
a) get over it?
b) do something harmful?
Good luck giving him access to your IT system.
This is a viral signature. You are now infected!
So, committing a crime is a part of the recruitment process? Cool!
Reminds me of the A-Team
Step 2 is go to jail
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Isn't that self-defeating? It makes the hijacked machine unusable, people will notice immediately and reinstall their OS.
in my mind, breaking into a corporate computer system is slightly different from breaking into someone's bedroom, but i'm just a wacky guy that way
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The "virus" was not just a show-off job. Nowadays they are always tied to revenue. This virus in particular was used to earn click cash and they got like 10 million yuan a month due to its widespread infection.
So the companies that are offering this kind of money are the companies that want to use spyware technology to boost their own revenues. In China, if you write a virus by your own, you are a criminal; if you write a virus as a company, it's called a "product".
... because I believe that people in there have lost the fate in the "rehabilitation centre" which prisons are supposed to be. So what, this guy did such a bad thing with his knowledge. But if he pays his "debt" to society (be in jail and pay whatever millions he must) and he can be rehabilitated then society wins...
Of course I do not expect people from the USA to understand... I mean, what can you expect from a country where murder is a "fair" punishment.
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If there is a thing to blame, blame Windows. Blame how it handles system permissions. Blame why almost all desktop PCs running Windows XP runs in Administrator rights all the time. Blame the lame user management schema which frustrates users who try to run in normal User mode, so the single security breach in the web browser can ruin their entire system. The UAC implemented in Vista is also a lame mimic of sudo(s) in the *nix systems. It encourages user to click "Yes" for whatever dialog appears on their face. It is Windows who is allowing all this to happen!
just wonder why there are so many anonymous cowards in this world....
Perhaps I'm different from you, but I'd feel much better knowing that a convicted lock-picking burglar had nothing to do with the design or manufacturing process of a lock that was on my house.
Once they burgle someone, they demonstrate beyond any doubt that their ethics can be compromised, and I don't want someone like that involved in the design process.
"we can always get the same results from having more ordinary people working on the same coding problem as a lone genius."
WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. You don't hire a "genius" to do line level scut work. You hire him to create and find new solutions beyond what your common coder can do. Lemme compare it to music. Do you think a group of common composers would be able to come up with Mozart's body of work, just given enough time and bodys? No. You basically just posited the "group of monkeys + typewriters + time = Shakespeare" argument, which has already been proven false, thanks to the Net. Ten million Indian coders have also proven the Comp Sci equivalent.
I have worked with dozens of Chinese engineers (electrical, thermal, software, and mechanical) with excellent credentials (MSs and Phds from the "MIT of China" etc...) over the past 5 years. None of them have ever produced what I would call creative solutions to engineering problems. I think it is related to Chinese culture. They have been raised and taught to assimilate, not innovate. Ever seen the movie Hero? The story is about giving up your own ideas and desires in favor of unity and conformity.
I think this guy showed a little innovation with his virus. Something that is seriously lacking in China. The companies trying to hire him are willing to risk a security breach to get some badly needed talent.
On the other hand, every dumbass with an stupid idea thinks they have the right to shove their retardedness down our throats in the US. I guess its give and take...
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If this guy was such a 'precious genius' why was he jobless and presumably reduced to writing worms for hackers?
If he did go a college and learn his skills there this is a massive failing on the part of education system to be unable to get jobs for those qualified for them. I wouldn't be too surprised since I've seen plenty (almost all) education based on how well you can memorise and spit out something rather than innovate. The dumbass rote learners get jobs and the creative people are sunk unless they adapt.
If was self-taught and he had other options to show off his abilities, like some sort of job fair or something this wouldn't have happened. It's good that someone did recognize his talents and unfortunate that he had to go to jail and fuck with a bunch of computers to do it.
It's better to try to solve the cause of the problem rather than just minimise the bad effects.
Reading this article made me confuse with the working world outside. I'm a student and going to enter the job world soon. Here we've been stress about being ethical and yet this Li Jun fellow create the worst virus in his country which is consider by my lecturer as a computer crime but yet he is making million out of it.
I guess nice guys really finish last eh?
This may raise a question do I have to hack other people computers to earn a high paying job? The university should introduce a new subject on how to hack a computer so that they can produce a high quality graduates. Good luck to the company for hiring him. He may be beneficial for the company or disastrous for them. Either way he's still a menace to the computer world. A rich menace I would say.