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How Russia Recruited Elite Hackers For Its Cyberwar (nypost.com)
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."
Someone managed to get access to someone else's email account? EPIC HACKZ0ring!
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.
with LAN
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.
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.
There are a few elite hackers, people who really understand the low-leveling functioning of the system, who write the payloads in assembler.
Of course. A piece of code in assembler that gets injected on the system via a clever manipulation of the power phase and/or fan oscillation, delivered via Q-spoiling. Once infected, the host system sends an email to the hacker to let him know which version of Wordpress is running on the server so he can know which php file to upload and pwn the organization.
lucm, indeed.
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.
They certainly try, but there remain a number of factors in the Russian society that make the recruitment offer in Russia more attractive to Russian graduates than similar offers are to American or European graduates:
1. Military service is still mandatory in Russia, even for college graduates. I know this because several teaching assistants in my computer science classes here in the United States were from Russia and told me that a major attraction of studying abroad as graduate students was the opportunity to defer or avoid the mandatory military service back home. In the United States, military service has not been mandatory since the late 1970s and the jobs available to computer science and other STEM graduates are generally much more attractive than anything on offer from the US government or the military. Some of the European countries still have mandatory military service, but European armed forces are generally small and poorly funded which makes them less able and willing to make attractive offers to high skill graduates. So, a chance to satisfy the mandatory service requirement in relative comfort and with higher pay has the potential to be very attractive to a Russian graduate in Russia.
2. The private sector in Russia is nothing like what it is here in the United States or Europe. The opportunities are much poorer and therefore less attractive compared with a government position. Especially one that provides benefits that are hard to get and expensive in Russia, particularly for young people, like decent and affordable housing in and around the Moscow area.
3. The sorts of skills that one learns hacking on behalf of the Russian government are not the sort of things that one can easily learn in school or working for a legitimate American or European business. These skills can be lucrative in the criminal networks and Russia has generally shown a willingness to give the United States and Europe the middle finger when it comes to cooperation in law enforcement among other things. This makes hacking for a living, mostly with impunity, a much more viable career path in Russia than it is in the more law abiding countries of Europe or especially here in the United States where not only is hacking frowned upon, but as Aaron Swartz discovered, severely punished.
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.
Actually, it was done twice by 2 US presidents - Clinton and Obama. Both did what they could to try and get Netanyahu beaten in the Israeli elections - w/ Clinton sending Carville to manage Labour's campaign and actually pulling it off - getting Ehud Barak elected
While I don't believe that the WikiLeaks was the straw that broke the camel's back and tilted this election Trump's way, in the event that it actually did, it couldn't have happened to a more deserving candidate
"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...