In response to the news that the authors of the Mirai botnet have avoided prison sentences after cooperating with the FBI and providing substantial assistance in other complex cybercrime investigations, IT security experts commented below.
Nadav Avital, Threat Analytics Manager at Imperva:
I trust that the justice system carefully weighed the consequences in this case and can only guess that the benefits from the defendant’s assistance was substantial.
The silver lining here, in my opinion, is that the Mirai authors were brought to justice. Unfortunately, the attribution problem, in the cybercrime world, is very difficult and consequently not enough criminals are apprehended.”
Jake Moore, Security Specialist at ESET:
There is always a threat that fresh faced hackers would desire being placed on the payroll after an attack but this can’t be the majority. Being vetted to work in highly confidential areas of law enforcement is a serious procedure and can be highly intrusive. In my previous role investigating highly confidential computer forensics for the police even put me and my loved ones in interviews to talk aspects such as finances in fear of corruption. So when hiring potentially unknowns purely down to their skills, there will always be a risk attached – but like anything in cyber security, it’s about weighing up that risk.”
Sean Newman, Director Product Management at Corero Network Security:
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Ben Herzberg, Director of Threat Research at Imperva:
The opinions expressed in this post belongs to the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Information Security Buzz.