back to article GCHQ puts out open recruitment call for 'white hat' hackers

GCHQ is openly recruiting computer network operations specialists for the first time. The signals intelligence agency is looking to hire an unspecified number of staff to work in both cyber-security and cyber-intelligence roles. Roles include working in teams "detecting and preventing attempts to attack the critical national …

  1. thomas k.

    white hat hackers ...

    That would make them 'whackers'?

    1. h4rm0ny
      Black Helicopters

      Re: white hat hackers ...

      I don't know. I'm still working out how being employed by GCHQ would make them White Hats. I thought a White Hat was someone who hacked your systems to let you know about the flaws so you could fix them, etc. Pen. tests and all that.

      But I suppose you're automatically a white hat when you're employed by the Good Guys™. When you work for Theresa May, you don't have to doubt that you're on the side of Right - you know it!

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The problem is ...

    however much they tart it up, it's still a civil service job. OK, so it's probably "Sir Humph" these days, rather than "Sir Humphrey", but that will be all that has changed.

    1. Bloakey1

      Re: The problem is ...

      It is not the first time at all. I did an MSc. In I.T. security in the 90s with various other rum coves. A lot of us got an unsolicited invite from a certain Ms P. inviting us to imbibe at the trough of public security spending. There were also various ads in papers and itcaused a hoo hah then. In those days it was all for industrial espionage. Now I am not officially allowed to tell you the above but screw them I worked at the time for a bunch of apparent surrender monkeys. Soo greetings from Cannons pub in Gib. and screw the lot of them.

  3. wolfetone Silver badge
    Meh

    While the salary is attractive

    My soul has a price, and the salary doesn't meet the reserve bid.

    1. Vimes

      Re: While the salary is attractive

      I hear things aren't so good at GCHQ (where black hats are white hats only because the government say so)

      http://dilbert.com/strip/1994-10-31

    2. Tom 38

      Re: While the salary is attractive

      £28k is attractive? Please don't move to London.

      1. wolfetone Silver badge

        Re: While the salary is attractive

        "£28k is attractive? Please don't move to London."

        I wasn't looking at the White Hat job, there's a Web Development role at GCHQ Cheltenham for £45k.

        1. theModge

          Re: While the salary is attractive

          Also, £28k for a fresh graduate is very different to £28k for a person who has done a few years work and has some marketable skills

          1. Ol'Peculier

            Re: While the salary is attractive

            I spoke to an ex-GCHQ'er last night and £28k is not the normal entry salary either.

        2. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

          Re: While the salary is attractive

          I wasn't looking at the White Hat job, there's a Web Development role at GCHQ Cheltenham for £45k. … wolfetone

          And Dark Web Development pays a princely premium, wolfetone, but we’ll say no more on that. It’s IT is hush hush, wink wink, nudge,nudge …. Classified TS/SCI.

      2. phuzz Silver badge

        Re: While the salary is attractive

        It's about half as expensive to live anywhere else in the UK if you don't live in London. £28k would be a comfortable life in Cheltenham, although having grown up there, I would add that it's boring as fsck.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Joke

        Re: While the salary is attractive

        At £28k the wages of sin do seem rather low these days.

  4. Ol'Peculier

    Scarborough

    Why the emphasis on Scarborough? There's been a base here for decades, preceeding the creation of GCHQ. And it's a much nicer place to live than Cheltenham!

    (yes, I do live here, and know plenty of people that have worked at CSOS Irton Moor (Completely secret outside Scarborough was the alternative acronym)

    1. Sgt_Oddball

      Re: Scarborough

      If you're bored you can also play 'spot the back door' on Google maps regarding Irton Moor.

      I used to go for hikes up that way with scouts way back when o lived with my parents in Seamer. Didn't take too enquiring a mind to fathom it out on foot and from the air it's pretty obvious.

  5. Oh Homer
    Mushroom

    Wanted

    Apprentice to engage in warrantless mass surveillance.

    Must be morally flexible.

    1. Sarah Balfour

      Re: Wanted

      "Morally flexible"…?! I'd have thought "those with morals/a conscience need not apply" was more accurate…

      1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
        Black Helicopters

        Re: Wanted

        I would have thought the advert read:

        Come over to the Dark side!!

        but most likely any advert is just a diversion to make us believe they don't already know who wants that job

  6. This post has been deleted by its author

  7. Scott Broukell
    Meh

    <see below>

    I think everyone is being most unfair and beastly towards this particular government department - at least they actually bother to listen!

  8. RISC OS

    My cv says I'm a good team player...

    ...maybe I shall apply. Not sure I can do the free running that bond does though.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: My cv says I'm a good team player...

      "Not sure I can do the free running that bond does though."

      Don't worry, to judge by my short time working in IT for the Ministry of Peace, it's Brooke Bond, not James Bond that you should be aspiring to in this role.

  9. Stevie

    Bah!

    So at least someone is hiring IT bods.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wages

    So you want the cream of the crop with Tesco value wages?

    Good luck with that one.

    1. Sarah Balfour

      Re: Wages

      You REALLY think the Tories are gonna pay a decent wage…?! What planet have you just beamed down from…?!

  11. SolidSquid

    "Strict legal controls, safeguards and requirements apply to all GCHQ’s activities, which can only be carried out for the statutory purposes and in support of the national security priorities that are set by ministers,"

    Didn't they already have the courts rule that some of the things they were doing were illegal, and only got out of it because of the loophole that an employee leaked details of it?

  12. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    CyberIntelAIgent Security and Virtual Protection is AIMining Field of ET* HyperRadioProActivity

    "Strict legal controls, safeguards and requirements apply to all GCHQ’s activities, which can only be carried out for the statutory purposes and in support of the national security priorities that are set by ministers," it said.

    Oh please, you cannot be serious.

    If that be the case, and I wouldn't like to be believing it in the first place, is GCHQ unfit for future cyber intelligence and security purpose. There aint no rules regulating key players in these explosive new Great Games, and to think and believe that there are, has one immediately displaced and relegated to the sub-prime divisions, to be kept disadvantaged.

    And if £28k is the pay, does the the private sector pay more than twice as much for exactly the same sort of thing? ........

    Principal Engineer - Cyber Security [QUB]

    Pay peanuts, get monkeys does not a prime force make.

    Having said that, knowing what needs to be done to be effective in the field, has one able to command whatever one requires, and that be a richness beyond compare or argument.

    *Extra Territorial

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: CyberIntelAIgent Security and Virtual Protection is AIMining Field of ET* HyperRadioProActivity

      "Strict legal controls, safeguards and requirements apply to all GCHQ’s activities, which can only be carried out for the statutory purposes and in support of the national security priorities that are set by ministers,"

      That's just the man from GCHQ talking out of his doughnut, as usual.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Huh

    As far as I'm concerned GCHQ, NSA and the like are the actual traitors and biggest dangers that normal citizens face. Terrorism etc is just a useful cover and excuse. Historically more people are killed by their own governments and these scum are just enabling a 1984-type situation where there can be no genuine dissent/protest, what was the quote, 'a boot stamping on a human face, forever' ?

  14. Justicesays
    Devil

    Missing a comma?

    "...terrorists, criminals and others, posing a serious threat to the UK"

    FTFY.

  15. Scott Broukell
    Meh

    How about 'Britains Got Telnet'

    Each week you could have two opposing teams of four peeps on a TV show, drawn from say; pub quizers, gamers, librarians, IT folk and, of course, ordinary working people (TM). Each team has seven days to find out as much information about the other team members as they can. Categories could include; Hobbies, Health, Finance, Sports and On-line shopping etc. Methods could include your more traditional sifting through the contents of bin bags, intercepting mail and binocular focused observation. Tactics could involve calling the other teams bluff by threatening to reveal something really juicy, even though no such material exists. As the competition progresses the time period allowed could be reduced. In the later, more difficult stages, the teams might have to follow a randomly selected tourist from say a major airport hub and determine his/her identity and reasons for travel without drawing attention to themselves. You could even have all manner of diversionary tactics and double agents!

    No, no maybe not.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    Hey, still beats working for Wipro :)

    28K Sterling is senior sysadmin wages there :)

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    El Reg should send a mole

    Probably plenty of qualified candidates in the Register offices.

    Once inside, we will send you coded messages through these forums. A series of secret icons will be used to communicate with you.

    Now that Ars Technica has a UK office, we really need someone on the inside to keep tabs on these people, and take them down, if need be.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Re: El Reg should send a mole

      AC, Hi,

      Are not El Reg already long running a GCHQ AIMorph and shadow operation beta testing alternative media platforms/relatively anonymous virtual mission launch pads for a whole host of smarter global agents.

      Such puts them well ahead of all conventional and traditional status quo services and practically untouchable until intelligence in their ranks and files kicks in and takes over.

      And the super stealth in IT is in it being plausibly deniable too.

      Have a nice day, y'all.

  18. Mr Dogshit

    "for the first time" my arse

    I had a job interview with them in 2005.

  19. chivo243 Silver badge
    Black Helicopters

    lack of color spectrum

    I would classify this kind of job as somewhere between grey hat and black hat.

    Do you want the job? Here drink this kool-aid, we'll visit you soon. You'll soon see things our way.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The sad thing is ...

    ... I would love to support my country; and would love to develop my skills in this area. But because I strongly object to STASI like perma-pansurvelliance, which is absolutely unjustified by a bit of amateur terrorism, I'd never get the clearance. But then I don't much fancy a massive pay cut either.

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Is it a sad thing when IT is a good thing?

      The media/newspaper copy though, AC, does give the impression, however false it may presently be and currently accountable from the tray of Theresa May, that status quo systems and politically connected non-entities have a handle on cyber intelligence matters with creative command and crucial control of computers and communications ..... Live Operational Virtual Environment AIMachinery.

      And such is no sad and bad and mad and rad thing in the right hands, hearts and minds when a novel craft for noble vessels that server not as vassals for and/or with weaponry in AI and NEUKlearer HyperRadioProActive IT ..... Servicing Head Quarters, Titanic Disruption and Chaos with CHAOS, Clouds Hosting Advanced Operating Systems. IT is Great and Good Internetworking Game Thing.

      1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

        Re: Is it a sad thing when IT is a good thing?

        Oh, and lest the penny hasn't dropped yet ....IT is in AI a Great and Good Internetworking Game Thing too.

        And for the Few in Mentoring Charge of Monitoring Fleets, Per Ardua ad Astra MetaData and all that Commands CyberIntelAIgent Control of Virtually Live Systems with Practical Lines of Communication .... with Stealthy Zeroday Attack and Defence Plans in FailSafe Escape Flight Waves.

        cc Sir Andrew Pulford, Air Marshall Greg Bagwell

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Is it a thing when IT is a thing?

          As much sad as into how many parts it tears apart, as much goog as how many parts it sticks together.

        2. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

          Is it a sad thing when IT is a good thing? Of course not. Quite the contrary.

          And furthermore, just in case you have not yet, or are unable to realise such things by reason of not being properly informed or just not paying any due care and attention to the unfolding and unravelling geo-political landscape, is there an epic Battle for Britain raging but there will be no Yanking of Sterling and Stirling Assets for Impoverishing Follies that benefit Rich Fools with Dismal Portfolios of Dumb Utilitarian Tools.

          The lads and lasses in blue-skies thinking for virtual machines are seeing to that and ensuring that evolution delivers an altogether different counter-revolutionary result.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Human Ex Machina

    Does anything like this, but rather for human languages than for machine ones, exist anywhere in the visible world?

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Still offering a fantastic op but rubbish pay scales but hoping to find some people taken in by the glamour over logical thinking and ending up with a cultural petri dish all thinking the same way then?

    Plus ça change eh.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Actually, I'm thinking of taking that job.

    I don't need a big salary, and I can see me being useful in this role.

    Mostly boycotting whatever scheme they're trying to put in place to please their political masters or their own career aspirations.

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