3 ms·
What's the salary for a software engineer in urban China? 60-80k/yr USD? Two years of that salary is cheaper than a good single shoulder fired missile. Seems
by kube-system 3y ago
What's the salary for a software engineer in urban China? 60-80k/yr USD? Two years of that salary is cheaper than a good single shoulder fired missile. Seems like a pretty cheap attack vector to me. A Javelin is a quarter million per pop and they can only hit one target.
- acdha 3y agoYeah, exactly - when your army is measured in the millions, picking n hundred with technical aptitude is basically a rounding error.
- alwayslikethis 3y agoThey are paid much less than that. However, American weapons are also far overpriced due to high labor costs, among other things. The Chinese probably have cheaper weapons.
- catkitcourt 3y agoUnless the payment is performed by foreign entity (which means a US employer is hiring a Chinese hacker), it's not a wise choice to do currency exchange when measuring salary, because it would erase other facts affecting salary, like CPI or housing price. Apart from (both visible and invisible) taxes, I expect a senior programmer would earn ~500-700k CNY per year. Game programmers may reach up to 200k. For a team able to perform such attack, 1M/yr avg. might be reasonable. But if this is not a state-sponsored attack, I can't find enough interest. And, if this is state-backed...contractor or some dishonest officials would a huge part, so the real cost might be >2M/yr. Considering you can get nothing during 2 year's lurking I doubt if it's feasible enough.