March 24th, 2009
Ex-botnet master hired by TelstraClear
Remember Owen Thor Walker (AKILL) that got busted in the FBI’s “Bot Roast” investigation for operating a 1.3 million hosts botnet in 2007, and even once considered to be offered a job as a cybercrime fighter by detectives impressed by his (mediocre) botnet management skills?
Well, it appears that he finally got a job at New Zealand’s TelstraClear communications company, where he’s been contracted for seminars and advertising activities related to security, and has already managed to “help companies understand that it isn’t an overseas thing; attacks can happen anywhere.”
They sure can, especially when you used to control 1 million infected computers across the world.
AKILL isn’t an exception to the apparent rush to hire cybercriminals, often dubbed hackers by the mainstream media. Earlier this month, Italian software companies were showing increased interest in hiring a convicted Romanian phisher that was impersonating the Italian Post Office and stealing money in the process. A much more grotesque picture emerges following Mafiaboy’s newly released book entitled “How I Cracked the Internet and Why It’s Still Broken” and Dmitry Golubov’s leading position at the Internet Party of the Ukraine despite operating one of the major Internet forums for stolen financial data, several years ago.
Such eye-popping cases are a sad example of how while certain agencies bust, other international law enforcement couterparts discharge, and as it appears let the private/political sector diversify its HR “assets”. Even worse, they send a wrong signal to the rest of the cybercrime ecosystem.
Image courtesy of IAIN McGREGOR/Waikato Times.
Dancho Danchev is an independent security consultant and cyber threats analyst, with extensive experience in open source intelligence gathering, malware and cybercrime incident response. He's been an active security blogger since 2007, and maintains a popular security blog. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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