Why So Many Top Hackers Come From Russia (krebsonsecurity.com)

Long-time Slashdot reader tsu doh nimh writes: Brian Krebs has an interesting piece this week on one reason that so many talented hackers (malicious and benign) seem to come from Russia and the former Soviet States: It's the education, stupid. Krebs's report doesn't look at the socioeconomic reasons, but instead compares how the U.S. and Russia educate students from K-12 in subjects which lend themselves to a mastery in coding and computers -- most notably computer science. The story shows that the Russians have for the past 30 years been teaching kids about computer science and then testing them on it starting in elementary school and through high school. The piece also looks at how kids in the U.S. vs. Russia are tested on what they are supposed to have learned.
Fossbytes also reports that Russia claimed the top spot in this year's Computer Programming Olympics -- their fourth win in six years -- adding that "the top 9 positions out of 14 were occupied by Russian or Chinese schools." The only two U.S. schools in the top 20 were the University of Central Florida (#13) and MIT (#20).

Comments

Hackers in Russian media

[Tuidjy]

I've been watching a lot of Russian language media lately, because I have been trying to restore my language skills. Hackers in Russian movies are much more realistic than in American ones.

One gets asked whether he can get in a secure system? He does not boast, he answers "I will certainly try."

He does not mash the keyboard while he is getting a blowjob, he deploys an arsenal from 'Flashka' or from a alphabetical soup URL.

He examining an air-gapped system, looking for a way to get at the hardware, and mumbling about which patches seems not to have been applies.

He gets asked to get some video records? He asks "Do I have an hour and a half"?

Etc... And that is from police shows, where the staff hackers are not necessarily named characters, and definitely not the focus of the series.

This tells me that that the population at large has some idea about IT... you would not make a movie in the US where the driver will shift three times while driving backwards, would you? I mean... Uh, you get the point.

Re: Consequentialism

[arth1]

Are you talking about Sergey Brin, half of the duo who started Google, or how Russian scientists were involved in the mathematics behind eigenvalues, which is the underlying fundament for Google's pagerank algorithms?

Russian Engineers

[west]

In much of the West, crime doesn't pay, or at least pay well. Your average street thug probably makes less than minimum wage. Sure, there are a few that make a lot of money, but it's like trying to make a money as a rock band. Only the 0.1% make a middle-class income, and only the 0.001% make the money you see in movies. Plus, you're likely to wind up dead or in jail.

Consequently, for the most part, only the badly educated or stupid become criminals. There's the odd smart criminal, but having a legit job (if that's available) is simply superior in every way.

And then you have the former Soviet Union, with a ton of really smart, very well-educated, very talented engineers, with virtually no decent job prospects at all, but still fairly good virtual contact with the West.

And suddenly, given a lack of options, you have smart criminals.

And that is a recipe for total disaster.

As a matter of survival of the Western world, we need to open immigration from Russia so that these smart, talented engineers can find decent jobs that benefit us before they find ill-paying jobs that cost us terribly.

(Many of my most capable co-workers have been Russians who were able to leave, and man, we their talent working for us, rather than against us, for both our sakes.)