US Still Tops China In Manufacturing Computer Hackers

Saw an interesting article in today's Wall Street Journal (via StumbleUpon) about Chinese hacker culture that had several interesting points to make.

One point the author James Areddy makes is that Chinese hackers aren't actually very good at what they do, but there's lots of them, so what they don't have in skill they make up for in sheer numbers.

The operation works like an assembly line: The programmer then makes customers of others who pay to undertake the broader attack, spreading the malicious software, triggering it and sharing the payoff. . . Hacker conspiracies in China are structured like multi-level sales networks and even pyramid schemes, he said, not tight-knit criminal gangs that write "technically clean" code designed from the ground up.

This is opposed to the more lone-wolf style preferred by Western hackers. Interesting to see the assembly line concept pop up in such an odd context. Maybe "lean computer hacking" is a workable niche for some consultant somewhere.

Meanwhile, also of interest to me were the hacker production rankings, seen below. Turns out the lone wolves of the West still top the rankings, but how long can rugged individualism prevail over massive manpower?

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