Full FeedHackers: potential hires or rebel scum?
It is a tough economy and the tech sector has been hit particularly hard. Finding a job is getting tougher, unless you devise and unleash a worm that grabs attention, that is.
Take the plight of Michael “Mikeyy” Mooney, for example. This is the teen who claims he was behind the Twitter worm just a couple of weeks back was just hired by a company who saw his worm propagate and admired the work.
“I contacted him and saw his Web site, and thought it was interesting,” said Travis Rowland, Co-Founder of exqSoft, “Then I talked to him and found out he did it all by hand, so I asked him if he wanted to work as a programmer.”
Whether or not Rowland is merely seeking some publicity, hiring hackers is not a new precedent. The practice goes back, way back, as companies can’t help but respect the holes these hackers exploit. These hackers are sometimes the best resource to plug them.
Such was the case for New Zealand hacker, Owen Walker, aka AKILL. The teen stood trial last July for helping a criminal network infiltrate more than 1 million computers worldwide and skim millions of dollars from bank accounts. Since his hacking, he’s been giving seminars, advising top staff and even starring in advertisements for TelstraClear, a subsidiary of Telstra Australia’s largest telecom. The charges against the teen were dropped and the boy was fined in the amount of his hacker earnings.
So the message seems to be, “kids get hacking!” Is that something we should be promoting?
“Senior technology consultant, Graham Cluley says…Mooney should have disclosed the vulnerability to Twitter before going public. Doing anything else opened not just Twitter, but its millions of users, to attack. “The potential was there to expose a lot of peoples’ information,” said Cluley. “We have to be grateful, I suppose, that that didn’t happen.”
Do we have former prisoners as wardens? Do we have band robbers guarding the vault? Do we have hijackers piloting planes? Some will say these analogies fail to answer the question about hiring hackers. Perhaps some like Rowland, who hired the Twitter worm creator, see an opportunity to turn him away from the “dark side”. “If I can get [Mooney] on the right track, it works out for everybody.”
Source: [GoodGearGuide]
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hacking is a intelligent work and it done by intelligent person in today’s life everyone work on computer and no secure of your bank account and personal information they can be hacked by someone be alert
on April 21, 2009 at 01:20 AM - LINKHere is the catch on this kind of matter. Hackers has a lot of potential because they can hack some of the worlds great servers and has a security system that is hard to be penetrated. So people or company owners is some times amazed by their talents. That’s why they were being hired or being admired by other people and company owners. But still CRIME is a CRIME ladies and gentlemen. We mustn’t keep on encouraging this kind of people on what they are doing. If a company really wants to hire them then first consider your own safety. Because it’s just like hiring a chef who was an assassin before or a slasher. But still I’m not discouraging the hacker who wants to live a new life other than messing with others lives. It’ll be better if they turn them selves in and pay for the crime(s) that they have committed. Then live a new way o how to serve than to disturb the people(s) in your community and your country.
on April 21, 2009 at 08:39 PM - LINKArticles like this one are ####### pathetic, because you obviously do not understand the intricate workings of what he did, or what kind of vulnerabilities had on your site, otherwise you wouldn’t be writing such an ignorant ####### article, so go to ####### hell and die in a fire, okay? He did you, Twitter and everyone else that ####### uses that site, a favor, and all you can do is sit here and flame him. #### off and stop writing harassing articles, it is getting real sickening. You are a ####### loser, not a real reporter. Why don’t you try doing thorough research first, and possibly interviewing the people involved before making your grand assumptions you ####### piece of ####.
on April 22, 2009 at 07:38 AM - LINKAlso I don’t believe in f.u.c.k.i.n.g. censorship, you and people like you are nothing but little b.i.t.c.h.e.s. that don’t contribute anything good to society, I hope you all die.
on April 22, 2009 at 07:40 AM - LINKNe chance to talk with you amigo?
on September 30, 2009 at 12:46 AM - LINK