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Comment by ajay-d | Hacker News Reader

Russia also recruits cyber criminals, offering reduced sentences if they work for the government[1] "The cellmate said that people incarcerated for cybercrimes could get out before trial, in exchange for working for the government. Another inmate had already taken a deal, he said.

“It was an offer to cooperate,” Mr. Artimovich said.

“Why else would you work for the government?” he added. “The salaries are tiny. But if you do something illegal, and go to prison for eight or nine years, the F.S.B. can help you,” he said, using a Russian abbreviation for the Federal Security Service."

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/world/europe/how-russia-r...

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You think that's some kind of exception? All kinds of cyber criminals also work for western governments/agencies as consultants. E.g.:

"Since 2000, Mitnick has been a paid security consultant, public speaker and author. He does security consulting for Fortune 500 companies and the FBI, performs penetration testing services for the world's largest companies and teaches Social Engineering classes to dozens of companies and government agencies."

The difference is that Mitnick served his time (and is no longer considered a criminal in the US system) but in Russia you can get out of jail early.

In a world with less globalization as today, Mitnick targeted mainly US companies and US government (and not in service of the US government). If he'd targeted Russian companies and Russian government he'd be working for the NSA right now, or at least he'd not have served prison time.

Russians who work for GRU serve Putin. Of course Putin is not going to put those to jail. The USA isn't going to put NSA employees to jail either.

Well, same in the US. You collaborate and agree to work with authorities on this on that, and you get a special deal to be released early (or get a reduced sentence to begin with).

At least according to all these episodes of Law and Order and such I've seen...

Yeah, but we are almost certainly doing this already as well. So there's no advantage to be gained there. If a cyber criminal is valuable enough, ie-not a script kiddie, we're already making the offers.

We need ideas that are somewhat out of the box. Something that isn't already being done that we can start doing to bolster our capabilities.

AFAIK we aren't doing that. Once you've been caught doing criminal activity, you pretty much have no chance of getting the security clearance required to do cyber work for the government. They're willing to overlook criminal activity if you are up front about it and have never been caught, but any sort of criminal record is a showstopper for cleared government work.

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