Hacker News Reader

Comment by PoignardAzur | Hacker News Reader

> “These nascent psyops include efforts to erode the limited trust the criminals have in each other, driving subtle wedges between fragile hacker egos, and sending offenders personalized messages showing they’re being watched,” Burgess wrote.

Is the "Think about your next move" messaging that intimidating to hackers, especially those living in non-US-aligned countries?

I suspect this flood of weirdly cyberpunk imagery (seriously, mugshots with a Matrix background?) is more of an artistic choice to flatter the egos of the task force's agents than a strategic move. White hat hackers probably like pretending they're in a spy movie as much as black hats do.

View on HN

Based on what I have observed of l33t haxxors it is likely to send them into fits of apoplectic, impotent, rage.

People in that state tend to make mistakes more often.

Yeah, I think that’s the goal - ratchet up the psychological pressure and see if anyone makes a mistake.

By way of the example about the LockBit leader: you’re that guy and the feds put up a site saying they know who you are and in 2 days they’re announcing your identity to the public - what do you do? You’re an associate of that guy - what do you do?

The feds are basically whacking the side of the box to see what happens - when the status quo isn’t working, inject some chaos and see what you get.

> Is the "Think about your next move" messaging that intimidating to hackers, especially those living in non-US-aligned countries?

Don't know in practice for everyone, but people still like to travel. And the US doesn't forget. Do you remember Marcus Hutchins coming for the conference?

Once the details are out, they can potentially grab you through other friendly countries too.

I just imagine the mentality (and skills) of a cyber security expert who decides to work within the German bureaucracy, it explains a lot

An NSA or DOD guy doing digital forensics and cybercrime type stuff came to one of my college classes to teach a lesson or two. He mentioned that he would love if we came to work with him, but also people he talks to at colleges almost never do because even median pay at a generic private sector corp is better than the government wages for that work. So yes, people working in the majority of cybercrime shops are people who either couldn't hack it at a generic boring C# corpo job, or are specifically more interested in being a white hat than getting paid lots of crinkled, sweat-dampened VC money.

It's not even just the money, I had a brief experience working within german bureaucracy and i couldn't imagine a more soul sucking, conservative and uninspiring environment. You definitely have to be a certain type of person for that environment, the unpleasant type imho.

Eh. It is more complicated than that. I started out in DIA and a lot of government employees in the "hacker space" are indeed underpaid compared to their civilian counterparts. The way the sausage is really made though is through contracting, and these folks are paid. Bottom line is that if you want to do cyberspace stuff for uncle sam and want to be paid the you shouldn't be going to any careers/*.gov website. Look instead for generic "Network Operations Engineer" type postings that are in Herndon, Bethesda, Baltimore, Annapolis Junction, Fort Meade, and so on.

There are some perks to being a government employee, but you end up in the government framework for pay and what not, which sucks. if I recall correctly the folks at CIA (AFD I believe???) had some sort of system set up where they hired government employees as a POCO billet or something so they could bring talent in at a reasonable pay scale, and then they'd do some political maneuvering to rotate people around so everyone was getting paid. DIA was a charlie foxtrot in that arena and probably still is, so I'd avoid them. The FBI has a pretty good team in quantico, though I'm guessing again that most of the are really just Booz employees.

I know a few. My observation ist there are basically two types: Market rejects and fanatics who work for the government out of an antiquated sense of duty.

The latter tend to be quite good.

What about that sense of duty is antiquated?

Greed is more in style these days

It's antiquated because you would be romanticizing over an organization that has lost its integrity long ago

No. At least here courts and police are still respected for their integrity, but the government does not reciprocate loyality anymore.

It used to be that duty went both ways, this is not in fashion anymore.

Not really. It's more about understanding that having competent people in the system tends to benefit the community at large, and be willing to endure the (many) downsides.

And yeah, it doesn't work for everyone, and some people genuinely interested in doing the good thing can turn sour after a while. But I rarely see people romanticizing the work conditions or the system they are in.

Also having people willing to trade a pay cut for a way to "make good things" leads to people using their agency in surprising ways, sometimes fucked up.

> an organization that has lost its integrity long ago

That's every org. The relevant part isn't org structure or integrity but whether the org has an impact on stuff that actually matters. Not everyone is interested in optimizing the click rate of ads.

> Not everyone is interested in optimizing the click rate of ads.

that's basically it in a nutshell. the corpo world is all about enshittification, and aren't making things better.

it's debatable if the DIA is, either, but there is at least something to stand for other than greed, or some thought terminating cliché about how the "invisible hand" will somehow fix things.

If you become a German civil servant the hours are lovely, the pension is super and the pressure negligible. You need something, you ask your boss, then wait and twiddle your thumbs and watch YouTube videos until it goes up the chain and at some point comes back down. It’s like an oil tanker. Great in a straight line, but damn hard to change course.

It might make one or more of them change their behavior.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com