US Is Hiring Hackers For Protection

After reading this other thread,Hacker loses extradition appeal

UK hacker Gary McKinnon, "why not extradite him" , he might have some potential.

WASHINGTON - Wanted: Computer hackers.

Buffeted by millions of digital scans and attacks each day, federal authorities are looking for hackers — not to prosecute them, but to pay them to secure the nation's networks.
General Dynamics Information Technology put out an ad last month on behalf of the Homeland Security Department seeking someone who could "think like the bad guy." Applicants, it said, must understand hackers' tools and tactics and be able to analyze Internet traffic and identify vulnerabilities in the federal systems.

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reply to post by finishr1


I don't doubt for a second that the government and military enlist the services of black hats on a regular basis, however, McKinnon is an entirely different story. He simply brute forced the login which any 10 year kid can do.

McKinnon is a warning (and scapegoat) to regular, non useful peeps.

IRM

[edit on 1/8/09 by InfaRedMan]

Yea, this really bothers me as what he did was go in where the passwords where set to default.
Then they say he did hundred's of thousands of damage .
All he did was make them go in and set the passwords like they should have been in the first place.

Then after doing that they added up anything and everything they could and said that is what it cost and what he did.

What he did was wrong, no doubt about that, but for NASA lying about the damage really set me back, As someone who has worked on computer systems for over 30 years and knowing how they work made me lose a whole lot of respect for NASA and the Government and how they handled this.

They made it sound like he did hardware damage to the systems, this he did not. But they put it under the new secret laws so they did not have to show what he had really done. And he cannot get a fair trial here in the U.S so I my self do not want him tried here.

The government should have hired hackers long before they actually started to IMO.

i know since i joined back in 2007 the security has went up by over 60%. they started using cac card access to login, they uped the incription on computers and in the last 4 months they now have it where you cant save to any usb device of any kind or go to any website that will allow you to save to a xdrive on a website. they also blocked it where you cant burn information to a cd.

now there wanting to put all there internet and intranet all on sattelites so they minimize the hacking. they are trying to restrict it where no computer is on a land line but the funny thing is what happens if the sattelites go out?