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.'"

This used to happen in the US

[kill-9-0]

In the 80's if you got caught hacking, you might get some jail time, and get your gear confiscated, but often you were also offered a job.

Accomplices

[just_another_sean]

Three of Li's accomplices were also jailed for up to two-and-a-half-years each yesterday.

I wonder if they will get offers as well or do these companies want to stick to just the mastermind?

(Oh and I for one welcome our burning joss stick wielding, cute and cuddly Asian overlor^W, um, IT guys...)

Bad idea?

[GreyPoopon]

Am I the only one that thinks rewarding a virus writer in this manner is a really bad idea?

However, he later learned from media reports that Li, who created the virus over discontent at his failure to land a job, may not be a bad guy and "just went astray," the report said.

Sorry, but taking your discontent out on scores of innocent victims does not strike me as merely being led astray. At best, it shows a complete failure to consider the consequences of your actions. At worst, it shows that your personality is borderline sociopathic, in that you don't actually _care_ about the consequences of your actions.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I would think that rewarding someone who did this would simply invite others to repeat the performance. At first glance, it may seem that the price of imprisonment should be a sufficient deterrent. But the dude got five years in prison, and he now stands to make over $133,000 per year on his release. $133,000 a year is a heap of money in China. If you told me I could "play nice" and make less than $10,000 for most of the rest of my life, or I could instead spend five years in miserable conditions but not paying anything for room and board and then make $133,000 per year afterwards and live like a king, the choice would be pretty easy.

Offered a job for your crime

[craigkup]

It's like you robbed a bank, but you did it so well the bank wanted to hire you as security to protect them.

Re:This used to happen in the US

[Creepy]

Not just companies - the FBI. One of the first major pirate groups busted in the United States had members that worked for the feds in lieu of jail time or juvenile hall (the Super Pirates of Minneapolis [SPM]).

    As a kid I went to church with an FBI computer crime guy (and his kid) and knew a good chunk of the group that replaced the SPM - a group called the Midwest Pirates Guild - from school friends and hanging out on BBS's, so I heard a lot of info from both sides. It was kinda weird knowing the "good guys" and the "bad guys" and almost humorous watching the FBI guy give computer crime talks and use cracks by people I knew as examples. All the people I knew personally that were involved moved on to respectable careers not involving crime, so it isn't always a bad thing to employ them (and many were involved in other crimes such as hacking and credit card fraud, the latter of which would make me want to string them up, having been a victim).

If you've seen the movie "Catch Me If You Can" you'll see another criminal-turned-FBI informant.

Give him a job only after...

[Simonetta]

I believe in fairness. Everyone needs to work productively. So yes, give this guy a job.

    But only after he has spent MANY years in jail, and has reimbursed all the people who lost work and data directly resulting from the virus being on all the computers affected by this crime.

    So if this criminal has written and released a bit of secret code that wipes out data a hard drive, then he (always a he) should be required to compensate for the cost of collecting and entering this data. He must also be responsible for loss of income and profit in all the companies infected by his virus code.

    If he is still interested in coding after all the effort and expense that he must do to correct the bad effects of his deliberate action of writing and releasing a destructive virus, then he should be allowed to do so.

    But not until all the compensation has been made. It doesn't matter if this criminal is a coding genius, we can always get the same results from having more ordinary people working on the same coding problem as a lone genius.

    What I'm saying is that regardless of any individual's coding skills, if this individual causes millions of dollars of damage, he should not be allowed to work in this industry.