Uncle Sam Wants You To Drink Mountain Dew and F*ck With The Russians

Dust off your hacking gloves, that absurd adolescent dream of yours is about to come true.

You know the one; you’re kicking back in your Pro-Gamer Easy Slouch Boomrocket X5000 cushioned stool, taking a relaxed scroll through the SARS database, chopping here, changing there – you know, acting the noble cyber Robin Hood – before swinging ‘round to the FBI Internal Coms and Data Repository to learn a little more about the latest Bigfoot-piloted, super-conducting, inter-stellar Prius, when suddenly thirteen men is suits are smashing down your door and before you can hit the ‘Nuke’ button on the modified microwave standing next to your comp tower, Alec Baldwin has grabbed your wrist and said; “Son, I’m not here to arrest you. I’m here to offer you a job.”

Like this, but with less Angelina Jolie

It seems that the USA’s National Security Agency, along with NASA, DOD and DHS (isn’t that last one a girl’s school in Grahamstown?) has let it be known that they’ll be attending Defcon, the annual hackers convention, to be held in Vegas this year. Their purpose? To hire upwards of 1500 professional hackers to help keep up to date with, and combat, the constantly growing threat of cyber assault, both from abroad (Russia and China) as well as from within their own borders.

“The National Security Agency is among the keen suitors. The spy agency plays both offence and defence in the cyber wars. It conducts electronic eavesdropping on adversaries and protects US computer networks that hold super secret material - a prize target for America's enemies. […]The NSA needs cyber security experts to harden networks, defend them with updates, do "penetration testing" to find security holes and watch for any signs of cyber attacks.”

Apparently, in order to qualify for the job, you need to undergo an extensive background check, pass a lie-detector test and remain drug-free for one year, which effectively disqualifies 97.8% of all the programmers I know.

Assuming that there are no restrictions on alcohol consumption

According to the Technical Director of the NSA's Information Assurance Directorate and King Geek, Richard "Dickie" George (God, let that not be his handle), when it comes to cyber crime, the attack can come from anywhere. There is a lot of innocent noise in cyber land, making it easier for the actual criminals to disguise their actions. The NSA needs people with a hackers eye, because, in George’s words, “[W]e need to worry about everybody”, which is exactly the sort for thing you need to be telling a paranoid recluse with a natural affinity for data theft just before giving him access to multi-billion dollars' worth of Pentagon-spec computing equipment and an internet ghost-network that spans the globe.

That’s like dressing David Berkowitz in heavy boots, taking him to a puppy mill and telling him his new job is to keep the noise down.

“Did I win a competition?”

If there was ever a chance to prove to the world that sitting on your ass, eating Cheetos while Googling porn and conspiracy theories is a legitimate career move, now’s the time.

Read the full article HERE.