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How Russia Recruited Elite Hackers For Its Cyberwar (nypost.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the how-it-came-to-be dept.

Lasrick quotes a report from The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternate source): For more than three years, rather than rely on military officers working out of isolated bunkers, Russian government recruiters have scouted a wide range of programmers, placing prominent ads on social media sites, offering jobs to college students and professional coders, and even speaking openly about looking in Russia's criminal underworld for potential talent. From the New York Post: "Russia's Defense Ministry bought advertising on Vkontakta, the country's most popular social media site, to lure those who were more talented with a keyboard than an AK-47 rifle. 'If you graduated from college, if you are a technical specialist, if you are ready to use your knowledge, we give you an opportunity,' the ad promised, according to the Times. The ad went on to assure recruits that they would be part of units called science squadrons based at military installations where they would live in 'comfortable accommodation' and showed an apartment outfitted with a washing machine, the Times reported. The Defense Ministry even dangled the chance to dodge Russia's mandatory draft by allowing university students to join a science squadron instead and then questioned them about their proficiency with programming languages, the report said."

8 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. What cyberwar? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Someone managed to get access to someone else's email account? EPIC HACKZ0ring!

    1. Re:What cyberwar? by Narcocide · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's curious that the security of the WWW is not addressed by those who could do something about it.

      The problem is, the people whose job it is to do this, they decided to side with the hackers.

  2. Hypocracy by Zemran · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A country that regularly invades other country to force a change in government gets its panties in a twist over a theory that someone might have taken an interest in their election. The US does this all the time.

    --
    I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
    1. Re:Hypocracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A country that regularly invades other country to force a change in government gets its panties in a twist over a theory that someone might have taken an interest in their election.

      Correction. President Obama and his fellow sore losers in the Democratic Party got their collective panties in a twist because they lost to Donald Trump. As an American it doesn't surprise me at all that Russia wants to meddle in our affairs. We need a much tougher man in the White House and it's my hope that Trump will be that tougher man. Obama always struck me as too fawning and effete to be effective in a world inhabited by the likes of Vladimir Putin

      Okay, let me get this straight. Your completely ignoring the fact that the result of a national election was dictated by a foreign country in favor of a cheap shot against democrats? Seriously? Is this what passes for patriotism? The election was close. Months of stolen emails did hurt them considerably, and no there was nothing there that might not have been worse from the other side.

      Also, you want a tough guy, you know like Trump who appears to be all but ready to molest Putin with how much praise he heaps on him? That is your tough guy? Seriously?

      Obama stands up to the guy who attacked us and does what he can. Trump says, thank you, your such a wonderful awesome special and misunderstood man. We are talking about the guy who has a record of lead filled enemies and who has invaded at least the one country, not to mention has helped Assad murder his own people. Link That Putin?

      I don't know, maybe Trump is afraid Putin will put some polonium in his Cheerios. That or call his bank loan due.

      The only evidence I see about Obama maybe being weak on this was he didn't hit Putin harder before during the election because Mitch McConnell threated to cry about it. That may have been a little weak, and in hindsight stupid, but that is a tempest in a teacup to how spineless Trump has been. I seriously begin to wonder if he really is Donald J Puppet.

  3. Interesting, but entry-level programmers, not elit by raymorris · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's mildly interesting. As is normally the case, the article points out that the headline is bullshit. College students? That's where you find entry-level programmers, not "elite hackers". Nothing wrong with that, of course, you can train an entry-level programmer to damage computing systems just as readily as you can train them to build secure systems.

    There are a few elite hackers, people who really understand the low-leveling functioning of the system, who write the payloads in assembler. Those elite ones, who write assembler, tend to be older more often than they are college kids. College kids tend to *use* the tools written by the older, more experienced and "elite" hackers.

  4. Re:Fake news by wasted · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't know if I would call it fake, but I wouldn't call it news. I have no reason not to believe that the NSA and other government agencies recruit top talent in important fields from college, and I would expect agencies from other countries to recruit top talent in important fields from their colleges.

  5. A washing machine? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The ad went on to assure recruits that they would be part of units called science squadrons based at military installations where they would live in 'comfortable accommodation' and showed an apartment outfitted with a washing machine, the Times reported.

    Wait a minute, you mean the President Elect chose to pimp out the US to a country that has to recruit tech talent with the promise of a fucking washing machine? A country that's sitting on untold natural resources but has an economy smaller than that of Spain?

    Jesus, Trump should have at least held out for China. We might have actually gotten something out of that deal.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  6. I see why you are confused by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Okay, let me get this straight. Your completely ignoring the fact that the result of a national election was dictated by a foreign country in favor of a cheap shot against democrats?"

    WHERE do you get this garbage?

    THERE is NO evidence that the result of the election was "dictated by a foreign country"!!!!! Hillary Clinton's campaign idiot, John Podesta, stupidly responded to a phishing e-mail and in doing so handed over the access to his e-mail account to SOME HACKER located SOMEWHERE ON EARTH. Apparently, the unknown hacker then grabbed Podesta's e-mails and handed them to Wikileaks. There's a plausible report that even this phishing attack was not even the source of the Wikileaks info and that it was provided by a Democrat insider, possibly an annoyed Bernie supporter. IF this phishing attack affected the election, then what you are saying is that it was very unfair for the American people to find out the truths about Hillary and her team that were exposed and that by your reckoning the American people should have remained ignorant and been tricked into supporting Hillary (THAT would have been the electionhack the Democrats intended).

    You Hillary supporters are just getting pathetic at this point - there's now a poll showing half of the Democrats think Putin hacked the voting machines (something even Obama says is impossible). It's just like you people who think Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from her House; Palin NEVER said it, the words were said on SNL by Tina Fey who was impersonating Palin. If left-wing media outlets repeat a lie often enough, it appears that fact-starved bubble-occupying liberals will believe the lie.

    Answer this: IF Obama knew Putin was hacking the election over the past year-and-a-half, then why did he do NOTHING to stop the hacks or punish the Russians until now, just before leaving office and after supposedly letting Hillary lose to the Russian hackers???? Obama theoretically has NSA people snooping on all net traffic and e-mails etc, so SURELY he could have detected it and defended the Democrat party from a simple phishing attack and SURELY he must have iron-clad proof of all the hack traffic and should have known exactly where all the hack traffic was coming from and going to. If you are right that Putin "hacked the election" then why did the most powerful man on Earth (Obama) let him do it????

    Another Question: You Hillbots keep insisting Trump is Putin's puppet... where is any shred of evidence for this? Trump has certainly called Putin "smart", but if you Democrats are right that Putin hacked the election, then you agree that Putin is smarter than Obama. Trump has certainly said he disagrees with Putin's agenda but that Putin is a better leader than Obama, but this was a slam on the poor leadership of Obama and is certainly true if you consider who is getting more results from his efforts to lead his respective nation. Remember that Hillary actually enabled Putin to grab a big chunk of America's Uranium capacity and that her campaign boy Podesta is a registered lobbyist for Putin's banker...