How does one get hired by a top cybercrime gang? • Hacker News Board

Re: How does one get hired by a top cybercrime gang?

#41

Post by azinman2 » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #32

azinman2 wrote: post #3

Quite frankly she doesn’t come across as very smart, and certainly not very technologically sophisticated. The idea that you run into a problem and use Google to solve it hardly constitutes skill development. It is interesting that they’re hiring based on job boards. I don’t know how normal gangs recruit but I’d guess it’s a lot of word of mouth. It seems when there are real honest alternatives out there for skilled…

The idea that you run into a problem and use Google to solve it hardly constitutes skill development. You need to understand a domain somewhat well in order to Google effectively. For example, I don't know anything about flowers. Sometimes I see a flower that I'd like to identify, but I can't really Google it -- aside from color and perhaps the number of petals I'd have no idea what terms I'd use to describe a flower…

You could use Google Lens.

However we're not talking about a domain she knows zero about. We're talking about her building web pages. I'm guessing she's not suggesting that you could throw at her 'build a new OS kernel that brings cryptographic signatures as a base primitive for all operations'. So the reality is she'll be able to Google for n+1 things, not n+1000.

Either way, my point is n+1 Googling isn't the same thing as learning a new skill. It's expanding your knowledge right at the periphery of what you understand.

Re: How does one get hired by a top cybercrime gang?

#42

Post by azinman2 » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #3

Quite frankly she doesn’t come across as very smart, and certainly not very technologically sophisticated. The idea that you run into a problem and use Google to solve it hardly constitutes skill development. It is interesting that they’re hiring based on job boards. I don’t know how normal gangs recruit but I’d guess it’s a lot of word of mouth. It seems when there are real honest alternatives out there for skilled…

For people downvoting me, I'd love to know why. The many comments here aren't negating what I said or explaining why I was wrong.

Re: How does one get hired by a top cybercrime gang?

#43

Post by prova_modena » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

_zamorano_ wrote: post #36

mwint wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t in any way downplay your point, I just noticed this sentence and it made me think: “The idea that you run into a problem and use Google to solve it hardly constitutes skill development.” It’s probably natural for most folks on HN to consider “googling problems” an obvious, basic first solution - but I’m always stunned by how many people in real life, outside of the IT industry, don’t have that path in th…

Shockingly to me, in many fields, Google results are bare. Coming from IT, in the industry, even questions about software (very specialized, to be honest) get useless results. I think the openess of information in software is the exception, not the norm, though many fields like science are making improvements.

This rings true for me, and reminds me of my early experience learning about machining and CNC machines. There are a lot of very low quality googleable sources out there for that field (mostly dealing with the hobbyist side of it) that crowded out the information I needed for professional development and troubleshooting.

Eventually, as my knowledge of the field increased I learned the "pro" terminology for certain objects and processes, which improved my ability to search useful info. I also discovered through chance or personal recommendation some very useful pro-level online sources, which don't have a large presence on search engines. There was a long grind of several years before I got to the point where I could search online for machining information and solutions online with confidence that I could find useful results and assess their reliability. Even then, there is a lot that I need to find in books/manuals or in conversation with experts.

While this is a process that takes place when learning about any technical topic, in my experience its easier in programming (and to a lesser degree general IT topics) than in fields that exist primarily in the world of physical objects. IMO, this has something to do with the tendency of programming problems to "self-define" themselves in specific textual language (I.E. compiler errors you can copy and paste into google) and also with origins and focuses of the largest internet knowledge bases.

Re: How does one get hired by a top cybercrime gang?

#44

Post by drdec » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

mwint wrote: post #5

azinman2 wrote: post #3

Quite frankly she doesn’t come across as very smart, and certainly not very technologically sophisticated. The idea that you run into a problem and use Google to solve it hardly constitutes skill development. It is interesting that they’re hiring based on job boards. I don’t know how normal gangs recruit but I’d guess it’s a lot of word of mouth. It seems when there are real honest alternatives out there for skilled…

This doesn’t in any way downplay your point, I just noticed this sentence and it made me think: “The idea that you run into a problem and use Google to solve it hardly constitutes skill development.” It’s probably natural for most folks on HN to consider “googling problems” an obvious, basic first solution - but I’m always stunned by how many people in real life, outside of the IT industry, don’t have that path in th…

There are some definite non-trivial skills involved in successfully googling the solution to a problem. The biggest one is having enough reading comprehension to understand what you found (or alternatively, having enough time/patience to watch YouTube videos that take forever to get to the point. The second most important is the ability to recognize non-solutions or non-optimal solutions.

For many people, they are used to learning from other people instead of from search results. So it makes sense that their first instinct is to reach for asking those around them.

Re: How does one get hired by a top cybercrime gang?

#45

Post by azinman2 » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 6:25 PM UTC

balls187 wrote: post #7

azinman2 wrote: post #3

Quite frankly she doesn’t come across as very smart, and certainly not very technologically sophisticated. The idea that you run into a problem and use Google to solve it hardly constitutes skill development. It is interesting that they’re hiring based on job boards. I don’t know how normal gangs recruit but I’d guess it’s a lot of word of mouth. It seems when there are real honest alternatives out there for skilled…

> The idea that you run into a problem and use Google to solve it hardly constitutes skill development. Until you come across people who can't even do that. I'm unsure of your age, but I was a developer before Google was a thing, and researching your answer, using Gopher, Usenet, and/or books was very much how we solved problems. Honorable mention: talking to that Old-office-coffee-stained-teeth-sys-admin-who-probabl…

I’m not saying knowing how to google isn’t a necessary skill with unequal distribution. I’m saying that’s not the pathway that’ll take her as a front end web dev and allow her to write the underlying malware that the front end provides a UI around.

It’s as meaningless a statement as “I know how to read books so I can learn new skills.”

Re: How does one get hired by a top cybercrime gang?

#46

Post by distribot » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 6:27 PM UTC

balls187 wrote: post #4

This reminds me of the story in Freakanomics about the street level drug dealers making basically minimum wage, with the majority of the money going to high level traffickers who are typically firewalled through layers of middlemen.

I think that the difference here is that actors in places with radically different COL can pariticpate. Imagine if a kid in a Northern Triangle country could sell drugs on the street of an American city--the risk/reward is much different. To them, even American minimum wage could be a boon.

Re: How does one get hired by a top cybercrime gang?

#47

Post by ghaff » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

balls187 wrote: post #4

This reminds me of the story in Freakanomics about the street level drug dealers making basically minimum wage, with the majority of the money going to high level traffickers who are typically firewalled through layers of middlemen.

It's common in a fair number of places: professional sports, music, book writing (among those doing it for money), acting, law (to a lesser degree).

The very top does well, even very very well. Most everyone else scrapes by--if that.

Most professional jobs aren't like that. Sure senior execs can make an outsized amount of money but most of the rank and file are still doing OK.

Re: How does one get hired by a top cybercrime gang?

#48

Post by l33t2328 » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

ackbar03 wrote: post #35

Wait hang on, that cliff hanger though >"Multiple security experts quickly zeroed in on how investigators were able to retrieve the funds, which did not represent the total amount Colonial paid (~$4.4 million): The amount seized was roughly what a top DarkSide affiliate would have earned for scoring the initial malware infection that precipitated the ransomware incident." I'm not quite sure what this implies? That th…

> I'm not quite sure what this implies?

This implies less technically inclined “affiliates” used the malware made by someone else, slipped up and had their 85% cut retrieved. Meanwhile, the creators of the ransomware took their 15% cut safely.

Re: How does one get hired by a top cybercrime gang?

#49

Post by wizzwizz4 » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 6:34 PM UTC

neuroticfish wrote: post #17

mwint wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t in any way downplay your point, I just noticed this sentence and it made me think: “The idea that you run into a problem and use Google to solve it hardly constitutes skill development.” It’s probably natural for most folks on HN to consider “googling problems” an obvious, basic first solution - but I’m always stunned by how many people in real life, outside of the IT industry, don’t have that path in th…

>I wonder if there’s an opportunity to teach a “how to search” class in schools. We did this in a public middle school around 2002-2003 with boolean searches. Was this unique to my experience or has this been a common thing for awhile?

Neither: there was a brief period where there was decent ICT education, then it all went away again.

Re: How does one get hired by a top cybercrime gang?

#50

Post by distribot » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 6:41 PM UTC

Why would a person doing this type of crime reside in the US? I understand quality of life is higher than Russia, but Russia neighbors Latvia--her country of origin. It is confusing to me because if she were there, her activities would have been discovered but she would have had the tacit protection of the state.