81–90 of 114 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The company inherited all their customers and equipment from a sanctioned company (according to the Dutch news report). Should be enough for most people.
That just means the sanctioned company was selling to sanctioned entities, not that it was only selling to them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's not generalize, even if you feel like you can say that because you're a member of a group you're generalizing. It's unfair to most of the people in any group being generalized.
[flagged]
It really tells you something about US culture, when spotting patterns is now seen as racist or bigoted.
Patterns also can save your life. They are a built-in defense mechanism and many women are taught to ignore them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
Now I'm confused whether my observing patterns of behaviour and recurring beliefs clustered among people from my own part of the world are in fact racism or bigotry. Am I being indecent? Am I self-hating? Are others tolerhating? I only wish some white night would unambiguously tut-tut me or else give me a pass.
I've lived in four countries on three continents, from third world to first world, and human behavior is pretty constant across all of them.
I’ve been on the defender side of security my whole career. I know in some markets crime pays more than legitimate work, but it never ceases to amaze me how much thought, effort, planning, and engineering goes into providing infrastructure IT services for cybercriminals. The people involved definitely have the skills to be profitable at legitimate work; it just puzzles me that they choose to support criminals.
[flagged]
The article spells it out clearly: charging them with violating sanctions law by directly or indirectly making economic resources available to EU-sanctioned entities.
We should note these are not even slightly legitimate hosting companies, lest anyone worry too much about their non-KYC offshore servers. These aren't hosting companies that ask little, they are just directly front companies for Russian intelligence, owned by members of Russian intelligence, they don't do anything else, they don't provide hosting service to regular people even if you want it (I have tried). Unlike in…
We should note these are not even slightly legitimate hosting companies, lest anyone worry too much about their non-KYC offshore servers. These aren't hosting companies that ask little, they are just directly front companies for Russian intelligence, owned by members of Russian intelligence, they don't do anything else, they don't provide hosting service to regular people even if you want it (I have tried). Unlike in…
> email service provider (pissmail) I'm sorry this happened to you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> to pick on Eastern Europe for a minute, you're looking at the equivalent of ~$30-35k USD/year This is a disingenuous claim. Not only are there software engineers in rich western European countries that in absolute terms earn less than that but also your east European software engineer still earns multiple times their country's average salary.
I think s/he meant that if you earn 30k it's easy to be tempted by crime because the numbers are big. What night not tempt a Google engineer might tempt a telecoms infrastructure key from Anytinytown, Moldova/Romania/... That said I don't think there are many good software engineers that earn less than that in Western Europe. Net maybe, but certainly not gross, and if it's net that covers anything from pension securi…
I'm pointing out that this reasoning doesn't pass the smell test. A 30k salary in those countries actually represents between 5-to-10x your average salary. You are already considered rich and we'll off and leading a comfortable life.
It's like claiming your average FANG engineer earning half a million a year would be easily tempted to engage in criminal activity if that meant they could aspire to earn a few millions instead.
> (...) meaning you can live a decent life in most places.
Yes, there are only a few countries on earth where your average software engineer earns more than that, and mostly because their average salary and cost of living is already way larger. Some sources even state that the average salary of s software engineer in Japan is as low as $36k/year. Japan has a higher cost of living than most east European countries, they have a reputation of competence and technical expertise, and still you don't see Japan as synonymous with cybercrime.
I’ve been on the defender side of security my whole career. I know in some markets crime pays more than legitimate work, but it never ceases to amaze me how much thought, effort, planning, and engineering goes into providing infrastructure IT services for cybercriminals. The people involved definitely have the skills to be profitable at legitimate work; it just puzzles me that they choose to support criminals.
I watched the downfall and eventual jailing of someone who had a great job, career, and family after he started getting involved in cybercrime. As far as I can make sense of it, he enjoyed the thrill of feeling superior to others: Evading the law, exploiting people who viewed as stupid, and enriching himself in the process. He got caught through a mistake that was really dumb in retrospect. I think he believed his in…