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Pentagon Contractors Openly Post Job Listings For Offensive Hackers

Posted by Soulskill on from the must-have-eight-years-experience-and-good-references dept.

Sparrowvsrevolution writes "In the wake of confirmation that the U.S. government was involved in the creation of Stuxnet and likely Flame, a look over job listings on defense contractor sites shows just how explicitly the Pentagon and the firms that service it are recruiting offense-oriented hackers. Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, SAIC, and Booz Allen have all posted job ads that require skills like 'exploit development,' have titles like 'Windows Attack Developer,' or asks them to 'plan, execute, and assess an Offensive Cyberspace Operation.'"

7 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. Great for non-bathers by busyqth · · Score: 3, Funny

    For that exquisitely offensive hacker smell...

  2. Microsoft must be so pleased.... by ip_freely_2000 · · Score: 3, Funny

    the government is hiring people to hack my software with the intention of doing harm. If I was Apple or Google I'd be looking at this closely. Even if you hate Microsoft, this seems pretty ambiguous. I wonder if there's something in the Windows EULA that Microsoft should sue the government for violating.

  3. Windows Attack Developer - Wanted by ackthpt · · Score: 4, Funny

    Best advertising you could ask -- for Linux or Mac.

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    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  4. Openly Post Listings? by busyqth · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well I'm glad that they're posting the job listings openly.
    Secretly posted listings don't usually have a great response rate.

  5. Re:Department of Redundancy Department by ackthpt · · Score: 3, Funny

    The original name was the Department of War, which sounds way cooler.

    Yeah, and it was called Eastern War Time, before this Daylight Savings Time malarky.

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    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  6. Cool by Offensive+Hacker · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is right up my alley.

  7. Re:Do I detect a bit of dot-com in the mix? by ackthpt · · Score: 2, Funny

    But rocketing demand and a lagging supply of skilled hackers is boosting salaries and driving the defense industry’s war for talent into the open, says Alan Paller, the director of research at the cybersecurity education-focused SANS Institute. He cites SANS’ statistics that highly skilled cybersecurity staffers were paid as much as $175,000 in 2011, up 25 to 30 percent from two years before, and points to comments from the Booz Allen Hamilton executive Patrick Gorman to Bloomberg last year that the company tries to hire 1,000 cybersecurity experts a year, and struggles to find them.

    Gentlemen, the next new fad. Here's a trick question: how many script kiddies does it take to develop an exploit?

    Depends .. how many bug writers does Microsoft employ? 10,000? 20,000?

    meanwhile, Jawa seen at Euro 2012

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    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar