Russians Claim Their Hackers the Best In the World 551
Ant writes "ZDNet UK reports that Russians who once hacked for fun are now teaming up to get rich through cybercrime, according to police. The Russian cybercrime division, known as Department K, has warned that Russian hackers are the best in the world. From the article: 'Everyone knows that Russians are good at math...Our software writers are the best in the world, that's why our hackers are the best in the world.'"
Be on the lookout for (Score:5, Interesting)
These Russian hackers will get the top dollar from the Russian mob, and second to them will be the foreign call/data center workers who have access to foreign outsourced financial/medical data. The hackers will be much more reliable foot soldiers than call/data center workers.
Look to the Russian mafia and their hacker flunkies to be in competition with US criminals and Al Qaeda archetypes as the primary causes of global cybercrime.
BTW this isn't meant to be a troll against Russians, Russians as a whole are no more or less cool than the rest of the world... but the Soviet Union did fall apart and their ultra high tech stuff did scatter to the 4 winds, at least 2 of those winds being the Russian Mob...
Re:I can't believe you posted this crap (Score:3, Interesting)
And yet, the editors got exactly what they wanted from you:
1.) You clicked "Read More" and gave them an ad-view.
2.) You posted to the article, increasing the discussion size and therefore the general activity of the article, which lets them charge higher rates for advertisers.
Do you think these kinds of flamebait articles are posted because it's "Stuff That Matters?"
Japan are the most mathematical literate (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Japan 557
2. Korea, South 547
3. New Zealand 537
4. Finland 536
5. Australia 533
6. Canada 533
7. Switzerland 529
8. United Kingdom 529
9. Belgium 520
10. France 517
11. Austria 515
12. Iceland 514
13. Denmark 514
14. Sweden 510
15. Ireland 503
16. Norway 499
17. Czech Republic 498
18. United States 493
19. Germany 490
20. Hungary 488
Re:hackers or ... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:hmm (Score:4, Interesting)
typically you would pick an illegal investment schemes site(internet is FULL of these - there's so many that you wouldn't believe all equally illegal and equally shady and equally based on the ponzi principle of paying the first from money the people who came in later 'invested'). then you dos it for a day and ask for small enough sum that they will pay(say, 1000$ or whatever). when they're shady enough they won't even go the cops.
do it once a week and you could live like a king in russia.
also, probably a lot of non-russian hackers use russian proxies to cover their tracks.
Dont underestimate the people from the east (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess one reason for that is, the prolongued, we have to code lots of stuff in assembler period, which was way over in 1990 in our countries, most of them had to wait until 1995 until the situation was at the point they could afford better stuff.
The other thing is, that unlike the west, who has been celebrating half criminal business people and even more criminal laywers as heroes and basically has been slamming technical people since the mid eighties as freaks, nerds and whatever, in the old soviet union (which was until 1990) mathematicians and technical people were very highly regarded and it was a good career path (my current girlfriend had a father who worked in nuklear research and a mother who basically was a computer technitian) for both genders.
Things have changed by now as well, but that those things are still sort of a aftermath of those years. The reason why the SU never took off technically was because of the communists who basically had the researchers but lacked the mentality and the funds to give them a breeding ground for ideas, also my personal guess is that many of them were thrown into jail as well once they started to criticize the system, which always happens with intelligent people (one of the reasons why a downgoing society starts to beat the bright ones, who usually dont have the mentality to fight back, because they scare the ones in power).
Over here we have different problems, and it sort of is a wonder that we came that far, because the treatment the techies have been given generally is not that good, we probably will see the aftermaths of the current, we dont develop anything we just buy the stuff period in a few years, when the first corporations will crumble because they have become obsolete brands which will be slowly replaced by once outsourcing companies.
Re:-1 Flamebait (Score:3, Interesting)
This is not entirely correct. Russia also has lots of very talented chemicists, biologists and physicists (if not, noone would be worried of them hired away by rogue states or terrorist groups to build WMDs). There are also some even if small excellent chemical and molecular biological companies which are basically spin-offs of the Soviet Union's old science cities. But they are also only a few. So the situation in all natural sciences there seems to be like in mathmatics and computer sciences: Excellently trained and experienced people, few work for them.
Re:Well (Score:1, Interesting)
Foreign students seem far superior in math/science as highschool graduates. However, their colleges are often quite bad, letting us Americans catch up. For example Asian countries focus on memorization, not critical thought, which makes them more like cogs. I find I have to heavily manage them, rather than delegate.
That's a general statement, but I feel I caught up big time by working my ass off at an engineering school.
Re:-1 Flamebait (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't know anybody in the
My block list is beginning to look more like a white list.
Re:Bullshit (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Dont underestimate the people from the east (Score:5, Interesting)
Speed binning people (Score:5, Interesting)
I was taught at a school here in the UK which effectively speed binned students. You VERY quickly got a layer cake of aptitudes and attitudes.
Speed binning (I like that phrase you coined for education) is incredibly efficient IF all you want is to showw off with stars. It also creates some very complex characters. We also bombed through high level math very fast, e.g., had fantastic teachers who owere intense, and actually enjoyed it. But you had three distinct strata (gross simplification) - those who absorbed the strain and were pushed more and more until they lacked any social skill at all, those who cruised and tried to game the system (i was one of those, huh, so that's why i read Slashdot
But i characterise this as the difference between Intelligent, Smart and Proto-Genius. In the last caategory, when 4 "A Levels" were normal, friends of mine took on as many as twelve in the same period. And passed (pass for this place was 85% and above), and thought it quite the regular thing.
But when it boils down to whether my school prepared anyone for anything outside its walls, I am less sure. That's being diplomatic. I was intimately involved with some of the fallout from that pressure . .
Speed Binning people leads to people being in the bin.
If he wasn't snoring I'd say that to the Russian engineer asleep on my couch right now - a confused casualty i believe of the same approach when he was in school. Well, if you call ending up in advertising a punishment
To the abovev poster, NO grades do not translate directly into salary. Maybe they do if you exist within a confined and structured path from Grade School through Colledge and recruitment . . . maybe. My experience - some of the "dumbest" (N.B. quotes) guys i went to school with haul salaries that put the Proto-Genii in shame. Sorry, no direct correlation, because you assume all is C.P. Pressure changes characters. The secret to any educational system is to provide the social structure wherein the talented can work together over a long period of time. THAT is crucial to the sucess of the Soviet system - engineers who worked together, lived together, studied together. At least in my brief life i do not think there is such a structure available today. Communism removed many of the barriers to organising such intellectual labor, by removing marketplace constraints and the disruption of commerce on talented employees.
I think you lack somee understanding of the processes involved, particularly in the Soviet planning system, and maybe should look closer too at how things are where you are. I sincerely hope you can drive a truck through my quickly worded comments, but in my defense this si an area which has touched me and fascinated me, not least because i saw the casualties of speed binning young talent up close, and became fascinated not to make the same mistakes with my kids.
p.s. just a unfounded thought, but nerds are nerds the world around. i do however have a fairly decent amount of (often anecdotal) evidence that Soviet education created a lot more female (and pretty) nerds than did the UK or US systems. Education is about growing, and that's a LOT easier when you have abunch of chicks you can talk to
(sorry too lazy to fix typos)
Russia vs US debate (Score:3, Interesting)
Some of the most fun games of recent times come from old soviet countries while america got EA games.
Most spam and popups are for american products while the best serials and no-cd sites are in russia.
Saying that russia has the best hackers is pure flamebait BUT it is not entirely without reason. It reminds me a lot of the argument wich space program was/is best. The americans beat themselves on the chest with the fact they went to the moon and the space shuttle can carry a lot of people while Mir was falling apart. Any sensible person will remark that the moon missions have stopped, that the space shuttle is also the most lethal space vehicle if not the most lethal vehicle ever to be produced in a series and that Mir for all its creakiness stayed up for years and years and never killed anyone.
A lot of cybercrime comes from countries were the law enforces got better things to worry about then some rich foreigners getting ripped off. Are russians better at it then anyone else? Maybe but that is hardly something to boast about.
On the other hand we the supposed better west are only hurting ourselves when we laugh of these russian claims. Russian space program is still beating the west even with their ruined economy (how many russians been killed in space since the collapse of the soviet union vs american casualities? Who is currently keeping the international space station up and running?). A whole country whose goverment has no motivation to stop cybercrime is a big threath to the west that want to turn the internet into a big part of their economy.
Re:-1 Flamebait (Score:3, Interesting)
I have three Russian friends (ok, so one is Ukrainian ;-) and they all tell me the same thing about their University education. The final mark for the degree is based on a viva and the typical opening lines of your professor goes something like this:
"You're not an A+ sudent but I can't decide whether you are a B or a C. I guess it depends on what kind of mood I am in today." [The guy extends his supine palm ready for the bribe].
Now, I know you can buy an education in the West but I have never heared of anything so egregious as this.
When I was working in Moscow as a Java programmer for a UK oil company, the guys I worked with were less than impressive. They were just relatively bright young kids trying to make a reasonable living in an otherwise messed-up country by jumping on the bandwagon of some silly Western businessmen. And good luck to them. We all had a blast.
US education system promotes inequality (Score:2, Interesting)
1) Be equally accessible to the rich and the poor. That is, free education including college and graduate school. No prep schools for rich (but often stupid) people. Subjective admission systems, based on examining the files of the candidates should be prohibited. There should be written examinations only and the exam papers should have the the names of the candidates hidden (sealed) in order to avoid corruption. If an examiner grades papers with sealed names he/she cannot give a higher grades to the stupid sons/daughters of rich/powerful people. Oral examinations should be prohibited in order to preserve the anonimity of the candidates and to avoid corruption.
2. The parents, media, etc, should encourage education not because college graduates have higher salaries and make more money but because knowledge is fun and fascinating. Stupid money is not everything in life,creativity, knowledge and understanding are much better than money.
The US education is just the opposite of such a system. There are no written examinations in order to open a backdoor and make it possible to admit stupid children of rich people who make big donations to the universities. Think of it, how many janitor's or cleaner's children graduate from Harvard or Yale?. The big education fees are also a barrier which makes it impossible for talented but poor people to enter good schools. Because of all these barriers in the US the education is a (partially) hereditary thing, the children of rich people tend to have a good education while the the children of poor people tend to have no education. There are of course exceptions, but they are mere curiosities, as if they were miracles. (think of Abraham Lincoln)
In contrast, the education systems in former Socialist East European countries were close to the ideal system described before. They were not perfect, but much better than the US system. One thing is sure, talent was encouraged to flourish, whether you were rich or poor. Check out the biographies of Soviet scientists, many of them had very humble origins and everntually managed to became members of the Academy and even got the Nobel Prize. In the US system most of them would have had humble jobs and no education.
My story. I am a 53 year old theoretical physicist. I grew up and got my education in an Eastern European country (I wont say which one). My parents were both peasants with no education. They were both hard working, honest people which grew up before communism. They both wanted to stay in school and further their education (especially my mom). They had however no choice, for economic reasons had to leave school after the seventh grade. I had the opportunity to grow up under communism. I was very interested in physics and mathematics and managed to enter a high school for gifted people and eventually I got my PhD from the best university in my country. Now I work for a very good US university. Had I been born in the US I would have become a framer, a cleaner or a janitor.
Once peolpe get a right, it very hard to take it away. The World Bank pressures my old country to make their education system 'more efficient' and introduce mandatory education fees for college and graduate school. The government was about to do it, but people revolted, there were big demonstrations, etc., and high education is still free.
When I tell Americans about the possibility of free college and graduate school education they are all against it, because it will be baid from their taxes. So what? that this is why taxes are for, support projects for the good of the society. Is it better to waste mathematical or artistic talent in janitorial jobs?
BTW. Under the old regime, in my old country we did not pay any income tax. The only income source were the salaries, and all salaries
Re:Evil Empire Inc. (Score:3, Interesting)
What is so bad about the corruption is that it obstructs real capital growth. It concentrates wealth in the hands of people who destroy, rather than build. It prevents open communication and mobility of labor among markets, which are essential to development. Basically, a corrupt economy eats its young, which keeps it from growing to provide for all its members. Perpetuating a cycle that keeps most Russians poor, and the richest the most powerful. Not to mention all the local damage, in capital and human life, dignity, hope, to the Russians who are closest to the criminals, and therefore their primary targets.
Re:Dont underestimate the people from the east (Score:3, Interesting)
You can make an unforgettable evening, just by having intelligence and using it in the right direction, the joe bloke who also happens to be rich does not. In the end you end up with women who really love you, with unforgettable evenings on both sides(for you and your woman), rich joe bloke ends up with a woman wo loves his "best" his money while you end up with a woman who dearly loves you and would even stay on your side if you want bankrupt and got evicted.
Russian Hackers the best? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Dont underestimate the people from the east (Score:3, Interesting)
You say that "you won't have anywhere near the success as someone half as smart that thinks they're twice as smart and can kick a ball". I say you're dead wrong.
It's important to be able to kick a ball and be in good physical shape. But you don't have to have a gift from God to dunk on no 12 foot tall rim or get a free kick in from 30 meters.
I'm good at chess, more precisely speed chess. And I don't care what woman it is, I can make her laugh with my trash talking and I can make her interested in the game just by smiling and showing her that I love it. Long story short, if you love anything, a woman will see that in you and respect it (men will too).
Also, allow me to reiterate, comments such as "A confident male can get into the pants of a woman fairly easily" are slightly ignorant of the fact that this is not the case anymore seeing as how women are actually people and they also make money and don't Need men to protect them any longer. It's a crazy world out there, but you'll be all right if you smile once in a while... and mean it.