Jailed virus author gets prison,job offers

[sowhat-x]

http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/595

...now,that's a really cool world we're living in,isn't it?One thing for sure...
everyone gets rewarded according to his "services" to the common good... 

[JohnC]

I think this happened before with a guy named Simon Vallor. What a great message these security companies are sending out to people, "we will hire criminals". They're supposed to send out the opposite message. Well I just hope that any reputable company out there will stear clear of these companies that are hiring criminals.

[sowhat-x]

I agree 100%.But I have to add a few more notes...
"cybercrime" is a word that covers a lot different illegal acts,
some of them are not to be really taken seriously,
eg.the "classical" nowadays defacement of some random/obsolete's server main page,
with the addition of the supposedly elite "Hacked by...some teenager with plenty of free time" message,
while others are actually very important,from both an technical,economical and ethical view.
Taking this under consideration,what do I see in the article above?

"...guilty on Monday of writing and releasing the computer virus known as Fujacks..."
And they link to Fujacks description in Symantec's site,the company behind SecurityFocus...
"W32.Fujacks.E is a worm that spreads by copying itself to network shares protected by weak passwords.
It also copies itself to the root drive of all partitions and infects all .exe files found on the local computer.
The worm ends some security-related processes and services."

Hmmm...a NetBIOS worm that infects ALL executables it finds on a pc...
maximum amount of technical skills required - you could even say:
"now that's something that's never happened before!" 
This guy must have definitely graduated from Berkeley's University... 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California,_Berkeley

I mean,ok,I can understand the debate "to hire or not hire" a skilled ex-blackhat,
it's a very big issue that I really don't think it will be solved anywhere in the near furure.
But in the specific case,things are obviously quite different...
'cause I see no "skilled hacker" here:
just the "good-old-and-bored" lame virus writer...