Why So Many Top Hackers Hail from Russia
krebsonsecurity.com
Why So Many Top Hackers Hail from Russia
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Re: Why So Many Top Hackers Hail from Russia
#2Lots of talent (technical universities, emphasis on science and maths in general), undercompensation at local companies, and inability for international police reach (extradition from RU for "cyber" crimes is not routine).
So a nice opportunity for hackers so long as they don't bother the local state and act outwardly.
Re: Why So Many Top Hackers Hail from Russia
#3Sounds like job security for me.
Re: Why So Many Top Hackers Hail from Russia
#4I think this stems in part from the "oh I'm so bad at math" culture we have in the US, where its almost expected that most kids won't be good at mathematics. The side effect of this, imo, is that fields that are close to math or dependent on it (physics, stats, CS, etc.) pick up a piece of that stigma and idea that its acceptable to be bad at these things.
I've seen occasional articles about quants on wall street and how a good number of them are Russian/Eastern European (this kind of thing - https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-01-21/how-russi... ) and I feel this is another directly related element - having a strong math culture allows you to have a strong CS culture.
I've been happy to see that in the last decade, the US is starting to start bringing the pieces we need to get that kind of culture back - the popularity of startups and programming with the media that bring them to the attention of the average person. Space is cool again, and movies like "The Martian" are, imo, absolutely critical in making science/engineering something worth striving for. Hopefully we'll see some of this trickle down to our educational systems in the near future.
Re: Why So Many Top Hackers Hail from Russia
#5In 1973 a female teacher (I think a teacher) at my high school got funding to start a computer science (i.e. programming) class in my high school. We learned to code in Basic and Fortran(interpreted!) on a teletype machine with a paper tape reader, connected to some time sharing system, plus got industry visitors and some field trips. Today I am a programmer because of this. If someone can put that together back then you can do it now.
Re: Why So Many Top Hackers Hail from Russia
#6This article may have a point about poor state of basic computer education in US, but its just blindly guesses the reasons on the topic of why so many hackers are from ex-USSR countries. A pretty good level of CS doesn't help here much - take a look at Europe, for instance.
The secret ingredient is a culture of cheating. Its absolutely fine to cheat on any level of exam (unless you get caught, obviously). This makes students think about the weak points of any system, gives them a chance to train their skills etc. The side effect of this culture is much higher level of corruption and financial crimes
Re: Why So Many Top Hackers Hail from Russia
#7> although there currently are just over 42,000 high schools in the United States, only 2,100 of them were certified to teach the AP computer science course in 2011.
This boggles my mind. Only 5% of high schools are even certified to teach CS?
I wonder if this could be addressed at the state level. Why couldn't California mandate a more Russian style approach - perhaps even with an entirely new exam and curriculum since the CS AP exam doesn't appear to cut it.
Computer Science is just as important as language skills now, we need to start acting like it.
Re: Why So Many Top Hackers Hail from Russia
#8This article may have a point about poor state of basic computer education in US, but its just blindly guesses the reasons on the topic of why so many hackers are from ex-USSR countries. A pretty good level of CS doesn't help here much - take a look at Europe, for instance. The secret ingredient is a culture of cheating. Its absolutely fine to cheat on any level of exam (unless you get caught, obviously). This makes…
When you say the article is making a blind guess, can you substantiate that your own hypothesis is not one?
Re: Why So Many Top Hackers Hail from Russia
#9I think this stems in part from the "oh I'm so bad at math" culture we have in the US, where its almost expected that most kids won't be good at mathematics. The side effect of this, imo, is that fields that are close to math or dependent on it (physics, stats, CS, etc.) pick up a piece of that stigma and idea that its acceptable to be bad at these things. I've seen occasional articles about quants on wall street and…
Space was always cool. Math, not so much, simply because in the race to catch up on the space race, wayy too much emphasis was placed on teaching math instead of teaching math well, which turned a lot of people off of it.
Eventually, things like Khan Academy might prove a lot more useful in making math and science a culturally desirable field.
Re: Why So Many Top Hackers Hail from Russia
#10> although there currently are just over 42,000 high schools in the United States, only 2,100 of them were certified to teach the AP computer science course in 2011. This boggles my mind. Only 5% of high schools are even certified to teach CS? I wonder if this could be addressed at the state level. Why couldn't California mandate a more Russian style approach - perhaps even with an entirely new exam and curriculum si…
A lot of schools don't have the budget for gym class.
Also, the AP CS program, unless it has gotten markedly better since the mid 2000s, is just a basic Java course. I got a 5 on it, and I don't remember anything more complicated than how to implement a singly-linked list.