Dope smoking hacker? The FBI wants you!



The government cannot pay enough money to hire good hackers. Any private sector tech company will out pay whatever the .gov is offering by a lot. Also you almost NEVER see blackhat hackers willingly go and work for the government because they will make 2-3-4x more doing illegal shit or private sector VS hacking for a government.

Smoking weed and staring at code is whats ^. It also helps you from going absolutely insane ^__^ Dont even get me started on coding on Adderall.

tl;dr Governments dont pay or offer enough to get badass hackers.
 
OMG! What are all those testing companies going to do now!

Oh no!!!


Hopefully this is the start, and it will trickle into private sector more and more.
 
tl;dr Governments dont pay or offer enough to get badass hackers.

This. You ever try to source and hire ethical hackers who are willing to work for a tenth of what they'd make compared to if they just straight out hacked and stole from you? Easier said than done.

The govt telling them, "ok, we'll let you smoke weed if you work for us" really isn't going to be enough to get them to sign employment contracts. WTF are they thinking?
 
Same is true for other aspects of internet marketing.

Companies want to pay $35k a year for SEO, SEM, and media buying gurus...when most of them can make much more working from their home not dealing w/ corporate bureaucracy.
 
Same is true for other aspects of internet marketing.

Companies want to pay $35k a year for SEO, SEM, and media buying gurus...when most of them can make much more working from their home not dealing w/ corporate bureaucracy.

Working from their home on accounting, cash flow forecasting, web development, web design, search engine optimisation, copywriting, legal stuff, sales, customer service, media buying, paid search, social media marketing, yada yada?

People in $35k a year SEO/SEM/Media buying jobs generally don't have the wider skills they'd need to go it alone & run a company. They're also not, for the most part, "gurus", and many of them would not be good enough at sales to secure consistent freelance work.

The people that are great at that stuff get paid very well. Great digital marketers routinely earn in excess of 6 figures.

It's a completely different comparison to comparing public and private sector pay, where in this instance people get paid less in the public sector for doing exactly the same work they'd be doing privately.
 
When I hear "public sector" I think of the DMV. I do not think of the most qualified people for electronic warfare, online spying and counter terrorism.

I would like to think the gov't would pony up whatever it would take to get the best of the best, dope smoker or otherwise.
 
When I hear "public sector" I think of the DMV. I do not think of the most qualified people for electronic warfare, online spying and counter terrorism.

I would like to think the gov't would pony up whatever it would take to get the best of the best, dope smoker or otherwise.

They do... through contractors. IE Snowden
 
I would like to think the gov't would pony up whatever it would take to get the best of the best, dope smoker or otherwise.

It'd be cheaper to charge them with hacking crimes, convict them, sentence them, and then offer them a deal ("Hack for the U.S. for $40,000 + health and dental or do your 10 years.")

I notice that neither article - the WSJ or the BBC piece - mention what these recruits will be doing for the FBI. What does "fight cybercrime" mean?

Building a wall? It doesn't take 2,000 highly-skilled people to build a wall.

Investigating crimes? To what end? So we can tell other countries to "knock it off?"

Stopping crimes from occurring? Sure, like cops stop crimes from occurring? Like DHS stops terrorists from acting? What's the ROI on that spend?

Frankly, I suspect this has more to do with the FBI trying to expand than trying to protect the U.S. from "cybercriminals." After all, whenever an alphabet agency has a chance to add a large number of bodies, they do so. There's no other option.

More bodies means a bigger budget. A bigger budget means more influence. And influence is currency in DC.
 
I could be wrong, but I bet the govt generally gets the developers of the systems / software themselves. So the developers of various linux kernels, CISCO firewalls, etc.

However, the guys who actually hack into places like Target, Sony, Microsoft, banks, etc.??? They're generally 100% completely anti-govt and anarchist, so aren't about to take a say $8000/month job with the govt. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm assuming the main way they recruit these guys is via plea bargains within the interrogation room at an FBI office after they've been caught.

And the two are somewhat totally different types of people, with different mindsets. They're hurting for the latter, not the former.
 
JakeStratham, they raid hackers and then flip them and turn them into CHS under the threat of imprisonment and legal troubles. Then, by proxy, they use the CHS to infiltrate blackhat forums, sites, and groups. The FBI is the handler and use their lil CHSs for whatever they want. Then they charge all the people roped in from the CHS with various crimes, the CHS gets off free or with reduced sentences. Federal mandatory guidelines are a bitch also. The FBI routinely buys botnets, installs, 0day exploits and has pretty much figured out how to bypass any entrapment laws in place by being a handler and using their CHS. 1 out of every 4 hackers is a CHS. Ever wonder where those things the FBI buys via proxy go? hrmmm :)

Its cheaper and easier to use a CHS vs hiring a full time "hacker" and the CHS are often already well connected in the hacker and blackhat scenes.