Slashdot Mirror
UK Recruiting Codebreakers Via Social Networks
Demerara writes in with a story about a unique codebreaking competition sponsored by the UK government. "UK intelligence agency GCHQ has launched a code-cracking competition to help attract new talent. The organization has invited potential applicants to solve a visual code posted at an unbranded standalone website. The challenge has also been 'seeded' to social media sites, blogs and forums. A spokesman said the campaign aimed to raise the profile of GCHQ to an audience that would otherwise be difficult to reach. 'The target audience for this particular campaign is one that may not typically be attracted to traditional advertising methods and may be unaware that GCHQ is recruiting for these kinds of roles,' the spokesman said."
Oh is that all it is?
I'd got as far as pulling apart the code into sections, and found the other bit....
Not exactly tricky then. 'File' will tell you what it is, and the other bit's not hard with another two simple unix commands.
Pr0t3ct!on#cyber_security@12*12.2011+
They've been advertising on plain Facebook ads for months, if not years.
Strange that highly qualified computing/maths graduates don't want to snoop on foreign governments (and their own people) when their potential employers are publishing news stories that they can't even intercept Skype calls, are offering zero information on exactly what you're expected to do and how much you'll be paid for it (which is pretty pitiful when they do tell you), etc.
I'm a maths & computing graduate, with a love and special interest for cryptography. I've seen dozens of adverts by both GCHQ and even MI5 for similar positions in papers, online and everywhere you'd normally advertise jobs over the years. They're obviously desperate for recruits (and seeing the dross that passes for university degrees these days, I'm not shocked).
But they don't give you even basic information and the only time GCHQ hits the news is when they want more and more control over your communications despite being less and less relevant since public-key encryption started to become the norm (ironically killed, pretty much, by their own invention).
I think it would be against my principles to actually WORK for them, even if I admire their historical efforts, support the cause to save Bletchley Park, think Turing deserves a little more recognition and respect for his work etc. Nowadays, I just get the impression that GCHQ want to blanket-snoop on my own people for no reason, catch the low-hanging fruit of people too stupid to use encryption (despite the fact that there's not a single recorded instance of someone "breaking" PKE encryption and using the results in a court case, even for terrorism where we've had to let people go or imprison them because we *THINK* they might have something incriminating in the encrypted data), and/or "justify" their existence / funding by creating the occasional terrorist scare story.
I don't think the bulk of the brains want to work for them because of what they've creeped into, it's as simple as that.
so you did it?
You seem to be assuming that people would want to work at GCHQ? I grew up next door to the place, and as someone who was training to be a programmer, GCHQ was that added bit of motivation to do well at university. It was always a case of "work hard, get a good degree, otherwise you'll have to apply to GCHQ.....". I certainly never got the impression it was an inspiring place to work.....
I had my first graduate job there, and I was pretty much exactly what they're looking for. Started programming at a young age, maths degree from a top university, CS masters from the same place. I interned there, got a great appraisal and was offered a job. I started working there and I became disenchanted fairly swiftly. Cheltenham is an incredibly boring place to be 23 - the average age at GCHQ is probably mid thirties and most people had families and were settled. We went for after work drinks twice in my year there. Having said that, my job was fascinating. Extremely difficult, but fascinating. However, everything else was awful. Pay was ok - 25k for a grad starter isn't bad (although my university peers were generally on more), but it became clear very quickly that my pay rises were non existent. If I wanted to stay technical, then I might get to around 40k when I was 40. And that's might with a capital M. It's not really enough to comfortably raise a family and own a home.
When I told my boss I was resigning, he told me that he was resigning too because otherwise he was going to have to sell his house to cover his debts. He wasn't living an extravagant life - granted he had three young children though. His wife was working 3 jobs, and they were stressed. The only people happy at GCHQ are those who have chosen not to have kids, and often have their spouse working there too.
I left for a tech startup in London, and after 4 months here I'll be on 50% more than I was at GCHQ, and they'll continue paying me what I'm worth.
2 other guys left my team (around 10 people who were doing some of the most hard-core deep technical work in computing there) in the neighbouring months when I left. GCHQ cannot recruit and retain good people whilst the pay is so low - which is exactly what was said in the ISC report: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/14/gchq_microsoft_google/