Hacking – the Last Option for Job as a Computer Specialist in Eastern Europe?

Lots of intellectuals within computer science within Eastern Europe have lots of knowledge and know how. However, they are struggling getting a computer related job. Especially during the recessions or depression going on these days all over the globe, but hits the Eastern Europeans more than anywhere on the globe.

This is a fact that the criminal organizations has and still use to their advantage. Their knowledge is turned into tools within the computer crimes and lots of them are working for organized networks like the Russian mafia.

If a company with online business, whether its sales of products or services or anything else are desperate enough to win a fight towards their competitors, and they are willing to step over the legal boundary, they can pay some few hundreds of dollars for a DDOS attack on their competitors servers.

They are even offered a 10 minutes test to see if their competitor will grind to a halt or not. Or even if competitors would like to look into secret documents stored on their servers? For only a few hundred dollars this is also possible to achieve. You want to check if your girl or boy friend have some secrets stored, like photos or anything else? Just put the money on the table and the secrets are sent to your email if you want it done.

Behind all these services are hackers, those almost mythical figures portrayed in the movies, media as cult figures. We have been shown characters in for instance the classic movie from 1995, where Angelina Jolie acts as the pretty and hip hacker called Acid Burn, and in Matrix movie where the idealistic hacker called Neo is portrayed by Keanu Reeves. These characters are not so far from the reality as we would think. They are around us today, operating in various roles and activities, both legal and illegal.

They are hard to catch

In August last year, one of the most serious ID theft cases was revealed to us. Eleven persons were caught and taken to justice for having stolen more than 40 million bank cards. The data were sniffed from various store chains in USA and stored on servers in Eastern Europe and sold further to other criminals. The people behind this was one unknown from China, three Americans and one from Belarus, one from Estland and three more from Ukraine.

The attacks comes as we all know, from Eastern Europe were hacking seems to be very common and wide spread phenomena.

So why is this the case? Why are there so many cases related to Eastern Europe? Often the hackers are located in countries were it is difficult to have a effective cooperation with the police authorities. It is of course an advantage to have less chance to be taken when dealing with activities like this.

The level of technologoy know how in these countries are very high, as traditionally these countries have good educational systems which enables people with skills to aspire wthin these areas.

Today it is very difficult for these skilled persons to get work in the traditional industry, both in private and public sector, and they need money to earn for a living like anyone else.

The mafias have their own IT departments

The education increase in Eastern Europe, but faster than job opportunities and then computer crime will become a way of living for these highly educated people. There are people who have a full time job working with computer crime.



By: Stig Kristoffersen

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