How to Run a Russian Hacking Ring by Kaveh Waddell.
From the post:
A man with intense eyes crouches over a laptop in a darkened room, his face and hands hidden by a black ski mask and gloves. The scene is lit only by the computer screen’s eerie glow.
Exaggerated portraits of malicious hackers just like this keep popping up in movies and TV, despite the best efforts of shows like Mr. Robot to depict hackers in a more realistic way. Add a cacophony of news about data breaches that have shaken the U.S. government, taken entire hospital systems hostage, and defrauded the international banking system, and hackers start to sound like omnipotent super-villains.
But the reality is, as usual, less dramatic. While some of the largest cyberattacks have been the work of state-sponsored hackers—the OPM data breach that affected millions of Americans last year, for example, or the Sony hack that revealed Hollywood’s intimate secrets—the vast majority of the world’s quotidian digital malice comes from garden-variety hackers.
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What a downer this would be at career day at the local high school.
Yes, you too can be a hacker but it’s as dull as anything you have seen in Dilbert.
Your location plays an important role in whether Russian hacking ring employment is in your future. Kaveh reports:
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Even the boss’s affiliates, who get less than half of each ransom that they extract, make a decent wage. They earned an average of 600 dollars a month, or about 40 percent more than the average Russian worker.
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$600/month is ok, if you are living in Russia, not so hot if you aspire to Venice Beach. (It’s too bad the beach cam doesn’t pan and zoom.)
The level of technical skills required for low-lying fruit hacking is falling, meaning more competitors for the low-end. Potential profits are going to fall even further.
The no liability for buggy software will fall sooner rather than later and skilled hackers (I mean security researchers) will find themselves in demand by both plaintiffs and defendants. You will earn more money if you can appear in court, some expert witnesses make $600/hour or more. (Compare the $600/month in Russia.)
Even if you can’t appear in court, for reasons that seem good to you, fleshing out the details of hacks is going to be on demand from all sides.
You may start at the shallow end of the pool but resolve to not stay there. Read deeply, practice everyday, start current on new developments and opportunities, contribute to online communities.