Cybercrime Boom Times

[phernandez]

As the economy falters (to put it mildly), online crime is attracting talented, yet unemployed, computer and IT professionals.

Economic Bust, Cybercrime Boom - Forbes

As the financial crisis spreads from the U.S. to other parts of the world, it will likely drive more laid-off employees into the Eastern European and Russian cybercriminal economy, says Scott Borg, director and chief economist at the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit organization that acts as a go-between for the private sector and government on cybersecurity issues. Borg says he's spoken with local government officials about "identifiable pockets of engineers" that are migrating from legitimate computer work to the Internet underworld. "These are talented computer scientists, people who expected to be in positions of prestige, but are now unemployed without prospects, basically let down by their system."

[nihil]

I don't quite buy this:

Litan blames the attacks on the thousands of IT workers who have recently found themselves jobless, with the technical abilities needed to steal data or perpetrate fraud along with specific knowledge of their former employer's IT systems.

You don't let your security professionals go in a recession just as you don't fire policemen in the middle of a crime wave

The people you let go are developers and junior admin staff who shouldn't fit the bill unless the systems security is a load of crap in the first instance. If you want additional staff at any time you just hire them on a fixed term basis.

However, you have created a pool of "ronin" who will probably work for anyone who pays them, and have had their sense of morality tempered by that of injustice.

Effectively, this makes it easier for criminals to hire IT professionals at much lower rates.

[brokencrow]

...and have had their sense of morality tempered by that of injustice.

Yow, I see that all the time in this business. Companies that don't give
a feck about their workers or contractors, and in turn, the same from
"die Arbeitskräfte".

Dog stew, anyone?