Be Careful Hiring a Hacker - Twenty-Four Seven Security

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October 22, 2007
Be Careful Hiring a Hacker

I can certainly see the allure: Maybe you just so happen to be in a highly competitive industry, and you keep reading about all these different companies having their data compromised. Wouldn't it just be so much easier, say, if you are General Motors, to compete with Toyota if you knew everything that Toyota knew?

So if you could just hire a hacker to open up a competitor's data like opening an oyster it could really...WRONG!

Leave it to Hollywood, or the MPAA, which is the Motion Picture Association of America, to try something like this. In my career before this, I was (or wanted to be) a Hollywood screenwriter. I know, not too unique, but I was already one of the top humor writers (or at least I was in the book of best humor writers in the country), so I thought I at least had a chance. And I got an agent, and they liked a script, but still, in all my dealings with Hollywood, I could never, ever, get a straight answer from anyone.

Anyhoot, a link on Boing Boing mentions a Wired interview with Robert Anderson, a hacker. The MPAA hired Anderson, telling him, "We would need somebody like you. We would give you a nice paying job, a house, a car, anything you needed.... if you save Hollywood for us you can become rich and powerful..."

Not so dissimilar from me, as during my screenwriting days, I would often check my window looking for the limo that was coming to sweep me away -- and it finally showed up, only it was for someone else in my building.

The job the MPAA hired Anderson for was to break into BitTorrent trackers and snooping on their email. But once the job was done, Anderson realized they had no further use for him. Anderson was crestfallen, as he was certain this job was going to go places.

Abandoned by Hollywood, Anderson finally fessed up to BitTorrent, telling them, "'I sold you out to the MPAA. I felt guilty (for) what happened and I kinda also thought at that point the MPAA wasn't going to do anything."

Hiring a hacker is like getting into a crap throwing contest: even if you win, you still wind up with crap all over you.