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How does one get hired by a top cybercrime gang?

krebsonsecurity.com

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

#111

Post by pault »

ghaff wrote: post #47
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.

I’ve always called them glamour or prestige jobs. If people think it’s cool there will always be someone willing to do it for free.

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

#112

Post by mewkou »

alisonkisk wrote: post #104
mewkou wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry to hear that about your friend. Its never good to hear about how someone threw their life away for temporary rewards. You say they weren't violent, but violence is not the only reason we incarcerate individuals. He broke the law, he knew it, he got caught, and now he's living with those consequences. I hope he learns a lot from this and decides to no longer break the law in the future. I hope others can rea…

The same argument applies to Turing being imprisoned for his homosexuality. There's nothing wrong with marijuana that deserves making it illegal, especially more illegal than murder, which was the point of this story!

Turing shouldn't have entered into a homosexual relationship if it was illegal.

If he wanted to do so as an act of civil disobedience then he should have been prepared to endure the consequences as a public spectacle that would perhaps further his cause.

Some laws are unjust, sure, but I don't think laws punishing drug deals are unjust.

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

#113

Post by mewkou »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #106
mewkou wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry to hear that about your friend. Its never good to hear about how someone threw their life away for temporary rewards. You say they weren't violent, but violence is not the only reason we incarcerate individuals. He broke the law, he knew it, he got caught, and now he's living with those consequences. I hope he learns a lot from this and decides to no longer break the law in the future. I hope others can rea…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis_by_U.S._j... Marijuana is legal or decriminalised in most of the developed world, including the USA. It's widely accepted to be relatively harmless, much less harmful than alcohol. This guy? He was an entrepreneur, just another person running a small business with a couple of employees. He didn't deserver a long jail sentence for someone else's fuck up. Just because…

What do we call entrepreneurs that break the law?

Criminals.

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

#114

Post by harel »

Not entirely related, but at the end of the 90s, just before the big Y2K, I was living in San Francisco, and interviewed at a residential house with some guy who was in the business of popups. The malware of that time. The job was to basically to do WHATEVER it takes to make those popups pop. No rules, anything goes, dirty tricks and all.

Hated popups. Didn't take the job.

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

#115

Post by jimbob21 »

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…

Seems like they just hacked the one affiliate, not the whole org. I don't think it was FBI undercover blow up the entire northeast oil supply type of conspiracy

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

#116

Post by JohnBooty »

azinman2 wrote: post #41
JohnBooty wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

    Googling isn't the same thing as learning a new skill.
Right, agreed. Search-fu is nearly always necessary, but not equivalent or sufficient.

Of course, there are exceptions. For example if you have somebody else's expertise on tap (in book form, or they're teaching a a class, or they're your best friend, etc) then no need for search-fu.

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

#117

Post by geoduck14 »

mewkou wrote: post #100
hellbannedguy wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're being honest, there's a small segment that sells because they think it cool. That whole gangster rap testosterone street $900 shoe guy. In college, I moved into a very cheap apartment. I had no idea, it was the worst part of Oakland. I saw some things that didn't make any sense. Some successful dealers had other opportunities. Most probally didn't. I was so naieve, I didn't know my roommate was selling un…

I'm sorry to hear that about your friend. Its never good to hear about how someone threw their life away for temporary rewards. You say they weren't violent, but violence is not the only reason we incarcerate individuals. He broke the law, he knew it, he got caught, and now he's living with those consequences. I hope he learns a lot from this and decides to no longer break the law in the future. I hope others can rea…

I'm not sure why people are down voting you. They disagree with the law? The law exists. He broke it. If you don't like it, work to change the law. I got a speeding ticket - can I get a bunch of up votes because no one likes to get a speeding ticket?

As an aside, Americans like to think they live in a bubble. Like their actions are independent from everyone else's and my bad decisions don't impact other people. This simply isn't true in a society where we all interact. There are laws preventing banks from loaning money at high interest rates - because it is bad for society. There are HOAs that maintain neighborhoods - because it is good for the neighborhood. We mandate health insurance (sort of). Amd we have laws regulating drugs.

We can disagree with how the laws are enforced - but we should not pretend that other people's actions have no impact on us.

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

#118

Post by perl4ever »

ghaff wrote: post #55
jedberg wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Law is more bimodal than a pyramid. All those other ones you mentioned rely on popularity to determine one's paycheck, which is why they are all pyramids.

They're not really pyramids though. If you're a baseball player, you either make a lot of money by most people's standards, albeit for a possibly short career, or you basically don't make much at all, even if you can play in the minors. Law isn't quite so stark. You don't have to be at a white shoe firm to do OK (corporate counsel, prosperous practice in a smaller city) but a lot of lawyers certainly make pretty mode…

I remember reading, some years ago, about how lawyers who couldn't find work would be stuck doing document review, and they would rant on the internet about how mind-numbing, low-paid, and degrading it was. But they'd be stuck, because it was the only option to pay off student loans.

I assume at some point the job was mostly offshored? It's one of those things that I wonder if people overseas would do a better job even at the same price, if they saw it as a great job, as opposed to Americans who see it as a badge of failure.

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

#120

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

> Witte did not feel obligated to avoid traveling to areas where she might be within reach of U.S. law enforcement agencies.

If the US really wants to get you, Russia, China, and North Korea (and maybe Cuba) are probably the only real safe havens.

If you are anywhere else, there is a chance that they can get you if they really want you.

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