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> Why is Russia so into hacking? Would it help if there was a startup community there to absorb the talent? Or is this the inevitable byproduct of bright people
by webmaven 5y ago
> Why is Russia so into hacking? Would it help if there was a startup community there to absorb the talent? Or is this the inevitable byproduct of bright people living under a brutally corrupt and dishonest dictator and his cronies for most of their lives?
It may be worth taking a look at the conditions that first gave rise to the eastern European malware scene in the late 80's, particularly in the Soviet Union and Bulgaria:
https://bontchev.nlcv.bas.bg/papers/factory.html https://bontchev.nlcv.bas.bg/papers/factory.html
In particular, the presence of the necessary information and lack of economic opportunity gave rise to the original scene, and today that has transformed into an environment where the economic opportunity is directly tied to various for-profit black-hat activities (ransomware, identity theft and credit card fraud, etc.).
It is possible to link the relative lack of other economic opportunities to corruption, and that is a valid observation, but if black hat activities weren't profitable and relatively safe from retaliation (as long as you avoid Russian targets), the scene would still be typified by disaffected individuals rather than organized professional groups.
I'm not sure if creating a bunch of startups to soak up the extra talent would work, as the incentives to get a leg up on the competition via the Dark Arts (DDOS your competitor, spear-phishing their sales people, etc.) would still be pretty strong.
- er4hn 5y agoThis is the key comment. Free college education, glut of college trained programmers, lack of a legitimate job market.
- afr0ck 5y agoFrance and Germany have free college education.
- ArnoVW 5y agoAnd an economy. Russian has the economy of Spain, with three times the population. And that economy is 50 percent oil and gas.
- astrange 5y agoSpain itself has extremely high unemployment, but I don't hear about software from there often. (There's one app I use developed there.)
- eloisius 5y agoThis kind of stat boggles the mind. How are they one of the top ~3 formidable military powers in the world while being no richer than Spain?
- croon 5y ago
- wolf550e 5y agoThey inherited the military of the Soviet Union, which was overhyped but large and not obsolete. They have invested money into keeping up with tech in principle, i.e. a few demo units, but they don't have money to actually equip their military with the new tech or to train correctly. So the Russian military has Soviet nukes and otherwise it's a Potemkin village. It may be that the nukes are also a Potemkin village, but it's dangerous to check. Russia has been doing asymmetric operations, e.g. buying the US republican party was a lot cheaper than winning a war against the US but effectively was almost as good. Helping far-right, anti-democracy, anti-EU, anti-NATO politicians worldwide has been destabilizing. Organizing both the racist and the anti-racist demonstration at the same place and time has kept people and governments distracted. They do a lot of mafia style things to bribe, intimidate and kill people into doing what they want. Turns out going after politicians is more effective than going after military officers because counter-intelligence is more hesitant to act when they suspect a politician of working with/for Russia.
- BeFlatXIII 5y agoIs the appearance of a deep state the main reason why counterintelligence is reluctant to act when it's politicans being bribed instead of military officers?