Hack a Million Systems and Earn a Job

An anonymous reader writes "It has been a number of years since the fantasy that hackers will be offered a job by those who they hacked was even a potential reality, but this might still be the case in New Zealand. An 18-year-old hacker responsible for writing a number of applications used by an online group called 'the A-Team' that allowed the creation of a million-plus machine botnet and a range of credit card fraud activities to take place, has walked free from court sans conviction despite pleading guilty. And to top it all off, the NZ police force were interested in talking to the hacker about working for them, and 'several computer programming companies' were also chasing him for his skills."

Comments

haha

[Anonymous Coward]

This has been on the news for awhile in NZ, the funny thing is the paper the other day said tens of thousands, then another one said hundreds and now it's a million!

Awesome.

What happened to ethics when hiring?

[Joshuah]

This guy has already proven that he will break the law. By working for the police department, he can write the systems for them, then later leave and hack their system. The guy has already been proven that he can't be trusted, so why work with him.

Re:What happened to ethics when hiring?

[mrbluze]

This guy has already proven that he will break the law.

No he hasn't. He wasn't convicted, so the judge considers that what he did didn't break her interpretation of the law.

The guy has already been proven that he can't be trusted, so why work with him.

He hasn't been placed in a position of trust anymore than anyone else, so he has not proven anything. On the contrary, the Judge remarked that he has a phenomenal future ahead of him.

By working for the police department, he can write the systems for them, then later leave and hack their system.

Nobody trusts anybody in the police department. That's important and that's how you fight corruption. He will fit in well there.

RTFA, he has Asberger's

[FlyingBishop]

Honestly, he's an 18 year old with Asperger's. In other words, he's a lonely teenage nerd, with a literal handicap in the personality department. The only thing to do is give the kid a job.

Asperger's, like autism, makes cause and effect a little difficult to process. That said, people with Asperger's also tend to be very methodical (as his computer expertise can attest.) Setting down a clear set of expectations for him about how to behave in the computing realm is difficult, but it's not the same thing as trying to reform a hardened hacker. He's young, and he's not entirely with it, at least not in terms of personal interaction. I imagine that's exactly why he hasn't been charged.

Some more context might be useful

[Repton]

Some more context might be useful. Walker had mild Aspergers syndrome; criminals were paying him to work, but the judge believed that he was unaware of what they were doing with his work. Even the crown prosecutor acknowledged that he had not profited financially, nor had he used the botnet (which, I guess, he helped make) for fraudulent purposes.

Summary: Aspergers kid develops amazing programming skills; gets exploited by bad guys; when it all blows up his family starts paying more attention to him and he gets more sociable. Judge realises that he done wrong, but he didn't mean wrong; sending him to prison would ruin his life and cost taxpayers money, whereas keeping him out of prison will let his family set him straight and turn him into a profitable, functioning member of society.