I read an interesting news story today. Apparently there was a hacker overseas that was a member of a group called the A Team. His original claim to fame was that he wrote and controlled a botnet that had over one million PCs at his disposal. This came to light when he used this network to steal credit card numbers. The result was over 20 million dollars worth of damage.This guy must have had the best legal representation. He was never convicted of any crimes. He walked away with an 11 thousand dollar fine. That would amount to little more than a slap on the wrist. Here is where the story gets interesting. Apparently there were many companies that wanted this hacker to work for them. This included companies whose information systems he had hacked. The real amazing feat is that companies were willing to pay this hacker the big bucks to come work for them.
Perhaps this is not too surprising. If you really want to keep your systems secure, what better a way than hiring the best people who know how to break into your system. I guess this is the hacker dream. Either write some progs that get you a lot of money. Or write progs that make you famous and get you the high paying job.
There must be a lot of money in the credit and greater financial industry. So there should be funding to pay individuals like the superman foreign hacker. I wonder if the antivirus industry also employs individuals like this. So far I have only demonstrated on my blog that I can write some programs. So that might only qualify me for a normal programming job. No big bucks there. I imagine that I need to write some more ambitious or profitable code. Time to go to the think tank and figure out which programs they would be.
