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A confession exposes India’s hacking industry
- awesometech 3y ago> "Everyone’s hackable" Is that like when Wonder Woman tells the little girl in the foiled bomb plot she can do anything she wants? The little girl should have asked when she can deflect bullets with her arm bands.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoThis has been there for a long long time. I remember Edward Snowden went to India to learn hacking. India also has an amazing open source culture. Was quite shocked to see how high quality they were, since the ones you hire from the large outsourcing companies like Infosys etc are so so bad.
- twsdop 3y ago[flagged]
- givemeethekeys 3y agoThe ones for hire at Infosys aren't necessarily untalented. They're very smart, but keeping your job often means fitting in, going with the flow, and doing what you're told.
- alephnerd 3y agoAlso the very technically adept ones at Infosys are skilled enough to land other jobs within 2-3 years of joining. That said, Infosys and other WITCHes pay very low. My cousins who are farmers earn 2x what Infosys pays thanks to a mix of farm subsidies, government rural employment schemes (MGNREGA), and local government jobs. And this is a common story for a massive portion of India now. It's gotten very difficult for WITCH to pay Tier 1 salaries so they've expanded IT offices in Tier 3 Metros like Indore, Lucknow, Bhopal, etc because $4-8,000/yr goes much farther in those cities.
- jimsimmons 3y agoIn my college Infosys was always seen as the option only slightly better than unemployment. Actually this was not even the popular view by the time I left.
- kshacker 3y agoI will age myself and maybe out myself but while infosys may not have been a dream job during my college days (pre infosys IPO), it soon was. The company probably wasn't any different in skills but there weren't too many people in tech those days. Minuscule. And post IPO infosys laid the foundation well those days, sold the company well and was indeed a dream job at least for a little while. But that's ancient history now.
- nsenifty 3y agoIndeed. Between roughly 1995-2000 it was the place to be. The hyper growth that followed post ~2002 brought in dilution in talent, benefits were cut (e.g. stock options were discontinued mid 2002) and the emergence of global companies opening India offices made it even less desirable. There's a meme about Infosys' 3L/annum salary. Funnily that was exactly my starting salary there (post confirmation) in 2002.
- kshacker 3y agoMine was 42K rupees :) annual. Since it is an old thread now hope no one is watching.
- _8j50 3y agoSome of the best actual hackers (not just pentesters and ctf winners) are in india. About the infosys stuff, it's cultural, as in infosys' culuture or rather the culture that comes about when you have misaligned incentives between a 3rd party outsourcer and a cheapskate western company. They don't get paid for quality. If you want to see talent there, look at the folks working for local companies, on their own or for multinationals. But you know, even in US companies that don't outsource I have seen that "infosys" culture of doing things low and slow and with maximum complexity and LoC and support cost, box checking "requirements",etc... Hire accenture or whoevee in the US and your experience would be similar.
- mr_mitm 3y ago> Some of the best actual hackers (not just pentesters and ctf winners) are in india. How do you know this?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- indianhacks 3y ago> I remember Edward Snowden went to India to learn hacking. Allegedly for 6 days and he also learned java programming apparently. Can someone get Snowden to confirm? I think this is some rumour based ad for a coaching institute.
- denton-scratch 3y ago> he also learned java programming apparently "Learn Java in Six Days". That sounds like "I lost 10Kg in two weeks". Sure, you can learn the basics of Java in six days, I suppose; but you certainly never needed to go to India to do it. I was thrown in the deep end with Java; from a standing start, I had to create production software in two months. I delivered, but the code I wrote was shit. And I had no training at all; there was no time. I learned using online resources. [Edit] In the 90s most spam and hacking seemed to come from relatively poor countries, like USSR, India, Africa and China. I assumed it was because with a PC, a modem and a phone connection, you could make a lot more than the average salary. Then outsourcing came along, Indian developers started eating my breakfast, and pay for UK developers nosedived.
- carlmr 3y ago>Then outsourcing came along, Indian developers started eating my breakfast, and pay for UK developers nosedived. I don't know many companies that fared well with this. Pay nosedived everywhere and a few years later when the companies realized it isn't working it went up again.
- contrarian1234 3y agoWhy are they seemingly underrepresented on Github? When I check out a library I often peek at who made it. My general demographic "feel" is - 40% some European or American - 40% some dude in Siberia, - 10% Chinese hacker in Shenzhen - 10% some cryptic Japanese hacker I'm always a bit surprised there are very very few South East Asians, Latin Americans, Koreans, Indians
- darnir 3y agoI don't know about the others, but there are indeed people like me in India developing and maintaining non-cool, not on Github, free software. If you're here on Hacker News, there's actually a pretty good chance you've run, directly or indirectly, code I've written without even registering it.
- contrarian1234 3y agoWhat's the popular forge platform in India? I know in China they typically host on Gitee - but it's in part an artifact of the national firewall. Didn't know in India it's also silo'ed off
- darnir 3y agoI wouldn't say its siloed off. Its often on popular forges like Github and Gitlab. But also on smaller ones like sourceforge, GNU Savannah, sourcehut, etc. My point being that a lot of the free software movement in India doesn't create the hot new Rust / Go app. Its more focused on smaller things or on using the existing tools
- nequo 3y agoWhat are some examples of smaller things that are more relevant in India than in the US/Europe?
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- lern_too_spel 3y ago> I remember Edward Snowden went to India to learn hacking. According to the owner of a podunk computer training school in New Delhi. If you believe this, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. https://archive.is/Aq6bU https://archive.is/Aq6bU
- infoseek12 3y agoIndia has 1.4 billion people, of course some of them are black hats for hire. Perhaps India is a hotbed of cybercrime but this article is mostly anecdotes and nothing in it is evidence that the nation’s at all comparable to other hotspots of hirable hackers like Eastern Europe or Israel.
- HexDecOctBin 3y ago[dead]
- SanderNL 3y ago> idol-worshiping pagans That came out.. wrong?
- HexDecOctBin 3y agoWhy? In the view of the descendants of Mediterranean civilisations — "the West" (Christendom) and West Asia/North Africa (Ummah), Hindus are the last remaining large group of pagans, and idol-worshippers to boot. Everyone else like them has been "saved" by hook or crook, stick or carrot. Am I wrong?
- egeozcan 3y agoThe term "pagan" historically referred to individuals who practiced polytheistic religions outside of the major world religions and Hindus worship Brahman ultimately. Also the "idols" are not seen as the deity but a physical representation that helps worshiping the deity. But I'd love to be corrected as my knowledge is very superficial.
- HexDecOctBin 3y ago> The term "pagan" historically referred to individuals who practiced polytheistic religions outside of the major world religions Not really, all nature worshippers have been called pagans by followers of Abrahamic religions. "Major/minor" is a modern concept, the original idea was of true believer and heathen – Religion was never a democracy > Hindus worship Brahman ultimately. Also the "idols" are not seen as the deity but a physical representation that helps worshiping the deity. Talk to 10 Hindus and you will get 20 definitions of Hinduism. Not surprising, when considering its 4000 year old roots and its practice in an ultra-diverse society.
- technophiliac 3y agohttps://archive.is/lTJOG https://archive.is/lTJOG
- ackbar03 3y agoI was involved a bit on bug bounty platforms like hackerone before, a very large percentage of the security researchers are from India. What's more fascinating is if you look them up on infosec Twitter, you see a lot of them are from these remote villages, where the security bounties are probably decent money for them.
- twsdop 3y ago[flagged]
- jofinjoseph 3y agoPretty extreme hot cake, don't you think?
- testHNac 3y ago[flagged]
- aigoochamna 3y agoIf their hacking ability is anything like the engineering ability you can contract then I am not worried.
- unmole 3y agoIf you're unable to hire quality talent, that's either because you can't afford the market rate or because you are incompetent. I don't know why you would want to advertise this.
- _448 3y agoIndia has a hacking industry? Seriously, I can understand scamming industry presence in India, but hacking industry, if at all present will be very nascent. Edit: In the title it suggests "confession", but it most likely was bragging :)