Gadgetopia

Scam Czars: What’s Russian for ‘Hacker’?: An interesting article that attempts to explain why so many hackers come from Russia.

Russia has long had a strong system of math and science education, and until the relatively recent upturn in the economy, the multitudes of whiz kids who graduated from its schools often had poor job prospects.

At the same time, they were entering a society that for decades had built up a deep skepticism about the virtues of following the rules. Under Communism, the thicket of strictures that governed almost every aspect of life was considered so inane that only fools were thought to abide by them.

[…] One result was that corruption was rampant in Soviet times, and has endured, if not gotten worse.