Job Interview? Nope, Malware.

Are you ready for this?

Attention Conservation Notice:

Just a quickie on job interview security.

Marcus Speaks:

This is WannaCry hero Marcus Hutchins. And he got sent a coding challenge as part of a job interview, but it was malware meant to root his system.

Are you ready for this problem? I think I am, but I’m a paranoid weirdo with virtual machines, and a spare laptop I will not hesitate to pull out, reload, and take to a coffee shop. If there’s anything even slightly sketch about an interaction, I am a hardened, reactive target. People act stupid on my time, they’ll end up like FreelanceTracker.

Now that I self describe as a CTO at Stealth Startup I’m getting a LOT of new contacts on LinkedIn. None of them have crossed into the shadowlands yet, it’s all been just hopeful salespeople thus far. But the day when I get an approach like Marcus faced is at most months in the future, and probably not very many.

North Korea:

I am both surprised and not terribly surprised to learn that 10% to 20% of North Korea’s GDP is based on crypto thievery. The condition of the average North Korean is pretty medieval - they’re kept isolated and regularly starved due to bad policy. I will note here that the pellmell rush from our current administration to crypto everything is … stupid, relatively speaking.

Preparation:

So what am I to do about this problem, given that it’s imminent?

Assuming this startup gets funded, I will have some wiggle room. The HP Z4 workstation that currently serves as the company’s datacenter will give way to a Promox cluster in a bunker somewhere. Do I have the energy to build something with that machine which simulates the business, perhaps even integrating it into the office network, and using it as a honeypot?

A year ago I would have just rolled my eyes at this. I do not have the spare cycles to scale that particular learning curve. But I would have said the same about the combination of technologies now running for the business.

Conclusion:

Learning and doing are in the past for me, observing and delegating is a better description of my future. I think this is a combination of my age/experience, as well as the effect AI is having on what it even means to be a knowledge worker.

So there you have it. Those of you seeking new employment are going to end up as professionally paranoid as I am, given the way things are going.