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1. The Russian gov't looks the other way. Hackers in any other country might fear prosecution & extradition, but Russian hackers are protected as long as they d

1. The Russian gov't looks the other way. Hackers in any other country might fear prosecution & extradition, but Russian hackers are protected as long as they don't attack Russians. There was some malware going around at one point where someone realized the payload didn't run if the user had a Russian keymap installed. 2. Kind of a "worse is better" phenomenon. This is apocryphal but while Americans and Europeans were digging into Apple IIs and Commodores, Russia just had crappy knockoff machines that didn't follow the behavior of the machines they were meant to be clones of, so anyone who stuck with it long enough basically taught themselves reverse engineering and the operation of "weird machines", how to operate in environments of undefined behavior. Thats just how I heard it, I'd like to learn more about their history since their space program was pretty one-to-one with ours, they definitely had computer engineers and programmers just as sophisticated as USA

javajosh 5y ago
>they definitely had computer engineers and programmers just as sophisticated as USA Russians also have a world-class reputation in math and physics. At least they did in the 20th century. Now that experiments are so capital intensive, theoretical physics has become unfalsifiable silliness, I would assume that these people went into software. Although I could be wrong.
heavyset_go 5y ago
> The Russian gov't looks the other way. Hackers in any other country might fear prosecution & extradition, but Russian hackers are protected as long as they don't attack Russians. You can see some of this with Anonymous and the FBI these days, too, and NSO Group and Israel. I wouldn't be surprised if most countries do this, now.
- javajosh 5y ago
  How does that even work? Does the NSA post on 4chan asking for l33t hax0rs to do a job?
  - dylan604 5y ago
    They run operations like Cicda3301 to recruit to ones that make it to the end. https://www.cicada3301.org/ https://www.cicada3301.org/ /s
    - saagarjha 5y ago
      Ok but seriously they fund things like USAMTS which I assume gives them access to a list of promising young Americans.
      - dylan604 5y ago
        That's boring maths though. Great, they found some people that can do hard maths. Cicada3301 winners prove they have a wide range of abilities. You're "tests" would be fine for the NSA types that just sit in a gov't cubicle going blind on cyphers. CIA wants people that can figure things out without getting caught.
        saagarjha 5y ago
        The parent comment asked about the NSA, and, well, they happen to do a lot of math.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    I'd imagine direct and indirect infiltration. Hackers charged with crimes, who are part of a larger group, sometimes get plea deals. As part of their deals, they might give up accounts, keys, data, or evidence from the group, and/or work as confidential informants for the government.
  - infogulch 5y ago
    I found Lex Friedman's interview with Nicole Perlroth discussion of hacker culture and the mechanics of creating and selling 0-days to nation-state actors interesting. https://youtu.be/hy2G3PhGm-g https://youtu.be/hy2G3PhGm-g
  - taneq 5y ago

javajosh 5y ago

>they definitely had computer engineers and programmers just as sophisticated as USA Russians also have a world-class reputation in math and physics. At least they did in the 20th century. Now that experiments are so capital intensive, theoretical physics has become unfalsifiable silliness, I would assume that these people went into software. Although I could be wrong.

heavyset_go 5y ago

> The Russian gov't looks the other way. Hackers in any other country might fear prosecution & extradition, but Russian hackers are protected as long as they don't attack Russians. You can see some of this with Anonymous and the FBI these days, too, and NSO Group and Israel. I wouldn't be surprised if most countries do this, now.

javajosh 5y ago
How does that even work? Does the NSA post on 4chan asking for l33t hax0rs to do a job?
- dylan604 5y ago
  They run operations like Cicda3301 to recruit to ones that make it to the end. https://www.cicada3301.org/ https://www.cicada3301.org/ /s
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    Ok but seriously they fund things like USAMTS which I assume gives them access to a list of promising young Americans.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      That's boring maths though. Great, they found some people that can do hard maths. Cicada3301 winners prove they have a wide range of abilities. You're "tests" would be fine for the NSA types that just sit in a gov't cubicle going blind on cyphers. CIA wants people that can figure things out without getting caught.
      - saagarjha 5y ago
        The parent comment asked about the NSA, and, well, they happen to do a lot of math.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  I'd imagine direct and indirect infiltration. Hackers charged with crimes, who are part of a larger group, sometimes get plea deals. As part of their deals, they might give up accounts, keys, data, or evidence from the group, and/or work as confidential informants for the government.
- infogulch 5y ago
  I found Lex Friedman's interview with Nicole Perlroth discussion of hacker culture and the mechanics of creating and selling 0-days to nation-state actors interesting. https://youtu.be/hy2G3PhGm-g https://youtu.be/hy2G3PhGm-g
- taneq 5y ago