Chinese Worm Creator Gets High-Paying Job Offer In Prison

martinsslaves writes "The recently imprisoned creator of China's worst computer virus ever (worm.whboy) has now been offered a job paying millions of yuan from his prison cell. He's actually been offered several, and one of the companies that has offered him the position of Technology Director was actually affected by his virus. The General Manager there now believes the virus writer may have just been 'led astray'. The media is reporting that author Li Jun originally wrote the virus due to frustrations over being jobless. 'So far, about 10 network companies across the country have offered jobs to Li, whom they regarded was a "precious genius," the report said citing Li's lawyer Wang Wanxiong. Li's cyber bug, which earned him about 145,000 yuan after selling it to other hackers from December 2006 to February this year, can prevent infected computers from operating anti-virus software and all programs using the "exe" suffix.'"

well yeah

[circletimessquare]

the only real way to ensure security is to have it constantly challenged. that's a job. and this guy did a good job of doing that. thus, he earned the income

which means 2 things:

1. there is no security in an environment where the security doesn't get challenged and defeated every now and then. or get's challenged, and the fallout kept secret

2. go ahead and make virii and worms. just make damn sure the payload is harmless or simply annoying. if the worm this guy wrote did something really nasty, you can be sure he wouldn't be getting kudos and job offers

crime pays

[Anonymous Coward]

The lesson to be learned from this is that crime pays.

The Chinese will learn, too, eventually...

[Opportunist]

The "West" learned in the 80s. You do NOT want those people in your security department. Yes, they have the skill, but they don't have the ethics. And that's the big deal here.

You will not get a job offer here for writing a virus. No reputable IT sec company will touch you with a 10 foot fiber cable. Yes, you obviously have the skill, but you lack the morals not to use it for what you've done.

What is really lacking in today's IT world is lectures and courses about the topic. Do you see many universities teach you something about malware? How to exploit a system? How to look for security holes? Yes, very controversial topic, but it's necessary. I mean, where are you supposed to learn that? Self study takes a long, long time, time you don't have in today's IT sec world where what you learn today is dead weight in a month. And, well, self study is usually only done by people who have an interest in applying that knowledge, and rarely for good...

Re:Oh god... I predict "resume spam" soon

[scubamage]

Are you kidding? This is HOW security comes into being. If no one compromises security, exploits holes, and shows people the errors that exist they will never get patched. That is why black, white, and gray hats exist. Its like yin and yang. Devs write something, black hats find holes, and the white hats fix it. If they can do it all in house, everyone is better off. Whose the one really to blame, the company who writes the shoddy software with gaping holes in it, or the guy who walks in through those holes?

Re:Oh god... I predict "resume spam" soon

[Nos.]

Its a little more complicated than you make it out to be. "Black hats" should never be offered a job by a company that gives a damn about its reputation. You don't reward people for committing crimes. Secondly, you don't have to be a black hat to look for security holes, and you don't have to look for security holes in other peoples' things.

Re:Oh god... I predict "resume spam" soon

[Jarjarthejedi]

Better yet let's be a little more specific. Let's ask victims of lock-picking burglars who were caught (the burglars) if that burglar should be offered a job making sure that other, uncaught, burglars can't pick the locks of that company any more?

I'd feel a lot safer if a burglar who was extremely good at lock picking was unable to pick the locks I was using. Same goes for security, if you have someone who is a professional hacker trying to penetrate your system you're going to find problems a lot faster than if you just have another White Hat, whose more concerned with patching holes than finding them, looking around.