Slashdot Mirror
Inside Look At Eastern European Vs. East Asian Hackers
wiredmikey writes with a snippet from Security Week: "Much of the talk about cybercrime remains focused on East Asia. But according to a new report, it is hackers in Eastern Europe that have actually emerged as more sophisticated. In a report entitled 'Peter the Great vs. Sun Tzu' ... compared hackers from the two regions. His conclusion — the Eastern Europeans are far more insidious and strategic. While East Asian groups tend to work for other organizations interested in their skills, hackers from Eastern Europe generally operate in small, independent units, and are focused on profit. Their infrastructure tends to be developed by them specifically for their own use in attacks. 'They [Eastern European groups] tend to want to be in control of their entire infrastructure and will routinely set up their own servers for use in attacks, develop their own DNS servers to route traffic and create sophisticated traffic directional systems used in their attacks,' according to the report. 'If they do go outside, they will carefully select bulletproof hosts to support their infrastructure. It is their hallmark to maintain control of the whole stack similar to the business models pioneered by Apple.'"
If the east Asian hackers are anything like the Indian and Chinese programmers I've worked with in the past, that sounds about right. They more often produce lazy, sloppy, jerry-rigged code--and work purely as guns for hire, in-and-out (usually leaving the rest of us to clean up the mess after some company realizes that their great money-saving outsourcing initiative just left them with unusable shit code). Give me a conscientious western programmer any day over that. At least the average American/European programmer can follow basic instructions and won't play dumb and ask for more money when you point out his code doesn't even work.
I am starting to think people end their articles with a completely useless Apple comments just to be ironic...
Apple is Eastern European hackers trying to steal your money
They're just training for a career in finance.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
godspeed as it seems that breaking something for profit is the only way corporations make improvements!
I only opened this because I misread "hackers" as "hookers"
"It is their hallmark to maintain control of the whole stack similar to the business models pioneered by Apple."
This statement is so absurd.
Why not compare to the Apollo space program or the DeBeers diamond monopoly... these comparisons just as absurd. Or, here's a fun analogy: the Soviet Union.
We get it, how the hackers work. You can get really fun with the analogies by getting political: say their organization methods resemble the organization methods of Al Qaeda or FARC or Wikileaks or Anonymous. See how the absurd analogy is formed from, and can be used to form, silly prejudices and bias?
Reaching for the absurd sort of analogy, like with Apple, tells us more about the author's hangups and obsessions or agenda: comparing and contrasting things and finding parallels in things which are superficial and uninformative.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Wasn't the Net created by "hackers" working on open-source? (to share informations for free around the world?) People stealing money and private informations are Theaves, Not Hackers.
*Thieves. ... and in the ol' days, weren't people exploiting system vulnerabilities called "Crackers"?
oh sorry it's "hackers", not "hookers".
Well back to work...
We'll never win this fight. How about we make up a new word for "hackers", and let it go? It happened to the best words... that's why it is good we have a symbolic language, mostly - easy to switch signs.
Maybe code artists? code artisans? cartists?
Supposed to be according to whom?
Get over it, I gave up this fight years ago. Language evolves and nomenclature changes. Either change with it or stubbornly misrepresent yourself to everyone else.
Wasn't the Net created by "hackers" working on open-source? (to share informations for free around the world?) People stealing money and private informations are Theaves, Not Hackers.
I agree with the second sentiment of thieves. Your first supposition, though, couldn't be more wrong. The 'Net started out as a US Department of Defese initiative through DARPA to ensure communications integrity across the US (in particular, the military) in the event of a catastrophe, up to and including nuclear attack from an enemy. Those communications would most certainly *not* have been shared freely around the world. At some point, there were enough private/private-ish entities on ARPAnet, it made sense to split MILNET off to perform the military functions, and *then* let the rest of the world screw around with the 'Net as you know it today.
dark and light, female and male, low and high, cold and hot, water and fire, earth and air... Brin and Yang and all that jazz.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Even though it gets everyone's panties in a wad, I still like the term "Software Engineer". IRL I actually go one step up with "Software Architect". Why would I want to call myself something that makes my clients uncomfortable? I want the term that is going to give them the most confidence and willingness to pay me more. I know that I am a hacker in the real sense, but calling myself that in business is simply unprofessional.
How about a comparison of East Asian vs East European Hookers?
So if East European groups are like Apple, then the East Asian groups are like Microsoft?
Actually if you follow what's being going on with Arduino and 3D printers, etc., what we used to call "hackers" are now calling themselves "makers," as in people who "make" things. I think a more accurate title would be "maker/modder" to cover people who are modifying existing products to give them new functionality. Interestingly these people tend to congregate in "hackerspaces" so it's all a mix of words.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Wow. 41 comments in and only a handful actually on topic. The rest just bitch about an analogy involving Apple or the proper use of the term "hacker". I guess Slashdot has totally given up on discussions relating to security.
For those (few) interested, here is the link to the original paper.
http://www.trendmicro.com/us/security-intelligence/research-and-analysis/index.html#spotlight-articles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Anyone else think working for someone, like the Asian hackers are said to, guarantees you far more protection against any threat toward you? Therefore, I think Asian hackers are the smarter and more logical ones here.
Using the word hacker in this sense, while obviously common in popular usage, is simply yet another example of Slashdot's policy of posting troll summaries to get commenters worked up into a nerd rage.
just like in real life where China produces cheap knock offs, these 'hackers' in china write code like SHIT..
the eastern European block and russia have ALWAYS been far superior at software writing than China. China are those dudes who go to packetstorm and scan for a bunch of shit that deserves to be owned.
3... 2... 1... Fight!
Or just "programmer"?
Because, the thing is, unless you have an actual engineering degree from a bona fide school of engineering, or you drive a locomotive, or maintain a ship's engines, you're not an engineer.
I know, I know... You want people to think you are an engineer, and you want us to say you're an engineer, because it sounds really important, way more so than just "programmer".
But you're not an engineer, unless, as I said, you have an engineering degree from a bona fide school of engineering, or you drive a locomotive, or maintain a ship's engines.
I think I speak for most engineers of the world when I say that I disagree that "Software Architect" is a step /up/ from "Software Engineer."
In meatspace, architects work out how they can make a building pretty, then turn to the engineers who then work out how to make it stand up. I'm sure you can fill in the rest of the analogy for software.
I thought the summary was from some blog where writers are paid by Apple references, but it is actually a quote from Tom Kellermann of Trend Micro. Perhaps he is so bitter that Apple users generally don't need/run antivirus software that he tries to associate them with illegal hacking methodology with such inappropriate, bizarre comparisons?!?
Which one were we at war with again?
http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png
> While East Asian groups tend to work for other organizations interested in their skills, hackers from Eastern Europe generally operate in small, independent units, and are focused on profit.
Stupids! What do the russian and bulgarian hackers have? Oligarchs with a pile of cash and failed countries of no future and soon lost Siberia.
What do the chinese hackers have in their list of achievements? The next world superpower with not one, but TWO different 5th generation stealth jetfighter types already testing on the runway. Those futuristic jets were built 99% on american knowledge the chicom hackers managed to exfiltrate via the internet. Some 25 years ago chicom industry had no idea how to copy an already vintage, Ford-T simple MiG-21 plane! Those young chicom console jocks have literally hacked together the future of their huge country. I bow down to their espirit d' corps and patriotism.
What did the russian hackers achieved? Stealth njet, vodka da, mashenyka da, maffia links da! See with your own eyes in their own self-promotion video, available here:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid3698508001?bctid=524257711001
We'll never win this fight. How about we make up a new word for "hackers", and let it go? It happened to the best words... that's why it is good we have a symbolic language, mostly - easy to switch signs. Maybe code artists? code artisans? cartists?
Artodes?