Join or sign in Register for your free TechRepublic membership or if you are already a member, sign in using your preferred method below. Use Your Email Use FacebookUse Linkedin

Would you hire a virus author?

Locked

Authors of the most recent MyDoom variant are apparently looking for work. Embedded in the code of the MyDoom.U worm is the following message: “We searching 4 work in AV industry.”

According to Graham Clulely, senior technology consultant for antivirus firm Sophos, no one in the industry would “touch them with a bargepole.”

http://www.virusthreatcenter.com/permalink.aspx?BlogId=32

Do you share Clulely’s opinion that once someone has become a virus writer there’s no going back? Would you hire someone with a proven virus-writing past?

Topic

Reply To: Would you hire a virus author?

In reply to Would you hire a virus author?

No way, these people have no morales and have obviously not worked in a corporate environment. I work in Healthcare and these virus’ cause chaos for these organizations. If they had any respect for anything they would have thought about that before they wrote the virus!!!

it depends

In reply to Would you hire a virus author?

I?ve hired felons before and I think my experience applies here, but I certainly never trusted them with much except outdoor manual labor ? I would never let them in my office or near a computer any more than I would hand them my SS# and a credit card.

In particular, most of the felons I?ve known lack both empathy and anger management tools which are essential for anyone dealing with any important

You simply can?t know what they will do when push comes to shove or when they feel ?dissed? (nor can a normal person often understand how they caused offense.)

True story – I had a very good worker who was on probation and he was always anxious to please, self-deprecating and invariably enthusiastic about any job I offered him. His probation ended on a Friday and I haven?t seen him again except for the following Monday when he showed up three hours late for work and proceeded to tell me off for all the crummy jobs I had given him.

I?m not a big fan of Dr. Phil except in two things, I too studied behavioral psychology and know that rewarding a cracker with a good job only tells them that cracking is the easiest way to get ahead. The balding doctor also keeps repeating the phrase ?the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior? which is often true.

?If we fail to learn from the past we are doomed to repeat it? is the best known quote of historian George Santayana and it?s easy to say it is simply a clich?, but that doesn?t mean it isn?t true. A clich? persists because people recognize the essential truth behind it, otherwise it would never become a clich?.

In spite of the ?romance? surrounding real hackers (I pushed the coding envelope a bit in my younger days too), there is no redeeming value in the work of those who spread worms and virus infections. They are simply vandals at best, criminals at worst.

Some sleazy businesses will hire them to do in competitors but if they do I suggest they never allow them near their place of business or they will become the next target.

If you feel you should hire an ex-virus writer because you need their skills ? go into another line of work.

If you want to hire one because you feel sorry for them, remember one final clich?: ?No good deed goes unpunished.?

As a consultant, sure. Wouldn’t let him look at code, though.

In reply to Would you hire a virus author?

I think there’s something fundamentally broken in somebody who does this kind of mischief. It’s like somebody who sets fires. It may be a temporary thing; maybe not.

There’s something to be learned from these people. You can interview them, ask them to explore weaknesses, ask them to provide intelligence on the “movement”. People like this often crave validation, and may be willing to blabber. But there’s no way I’d allow one of them on the same side of a brick wall with my code.

If your viral agent/firebug is young, then maybe he could be hired at 30, if he has a long record of not being stupid and has picked up a family and a mortgage. But if the guy is 25 and doing random damage through virus stuff, it means he has turned into an amoral adult, and can not be trusted with anything for the rest of his life. Hell, I wouldn’t even let him watch my dog.

Perhaps

In reply to Would you hire a virus author?

I think the worst part of this is that these people are extremely talented. I think that many of the use viruses just to prove their skills to their peers. I don’t know if I would hire a virus writter or not, once presented with the situation I will let you know. I know this, I will not activley search out a virus writter for employment, although perhaps we should act like we want this particular one so we put him jail…

Don’t reward a lack of ethics.

In reply to Would you hire a virus author?

There is no reason I can think of to hire someone like that. The phrase that comes to mind is “once a whore, always a whore”. Basicly, if they lacked the ethics and did it once, they’ll do it again. Especially if they got rewarded for it the first time.

[Author]

Replies