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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!
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
IIRC, the virus modified the registry entries which tell Windows how to handle
I remember at work someone convincing me it was a good idea to copy the
More Twoson than Cupertino
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.
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.
Dammit. Screwed again.
- Eugene Xavier Edwards
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
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?
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.