The Dirty Jobs of IT

dantwood writes "In an Infoworld article, Dan Tynan writes about the '7 Dirtiest Jobs' in IT. Number three? Enterprise espionage engineer (black ops). 'Seeking slippery individuals comfortable with lying, cheating, stealing, breaking, and entering for penetration testing of enterprise networks. Requirements include familiarity with hacking, malware, and forgery; must be able to plausibly impersonate a pest control specialist or a fire marshal. Please submit rap sheet along with resume.'" Paging Mike Rowe, Mike Rowe to the IT desk.

Comments

Left out ecommerce

[rossz]

For a time I was the primary (er, only) technical person for an eCommerce site. I learned one important lesson. Sales people have zero morals. They would lie to their own mother to make a sale. Hell, they would toss in sex with their baby sister to make a sale. I felt sleazy just keeping their servers running. I hope I never have to take that kind of job again.

Risking your life to test security

[MichaelCrawford]

I took a security course at Interop many years ago. The guy who taught the course worked on a "Tiger Team" that tested the security of White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. They only base employee who knew in advance was the base commander.

My teacher stayed in a nearby motel and hacked in over the telephone, but a military officer with expertise in security parachuted into the base at night - it's a big base, with lots of wide open space.

He started breaking into computer rooms. Interestingly, he was detected but not caught. My teacher intercepted emails from the base staff warning that an intruder had been seen in the area.

Eventually they went public, and submitted a report to the staff as to how they could improve security.

They emphasized that this sort of thing is meant to help, and not to cost anyone their jobs.

Re:Risking your life to test security

[QuantumG]

Parachute eh? Why not just wait until there's an airshow at Holloman airforce base, which is right next door, and drive over to White Sands.. it's not like they have any real border security between the two. I know because I nearly accidentally drove the wrong way into White Sands last time I was at Holloman.. thankfully they do put up a nice big sign saying "WARNING: rockets being tested".