Technologically Clueless Russian Spy Hired As 'it Innovator' For Bank

[Infiltrator]

Russian spy Anna Chapman is making headlines this week for posing provocatively in a photo spread in the Russian edition of Maxim magazine, but she equally deserves notoriety for landing a job as an IT security official in a Russian bank despite glaring gaps in her technical knowledge.

A statement by FondServisBank says it hired Chapman "to bring innovation to its information technologies," according to a story by the Associated Press.

Chapman was one of 12 Russian spies arrested in the United States in July and returned to Russia in a spy swap. The ring as a whole was pretty inept technologically -- Chapman in particular.

She is the same woman who couldn't troubleshoot an ad hoc, peer-to-peer wireless network and who turned her laptop over to an undercover U.S. agent so he could get it fixed for her, according to court papers used to get an arrest warrant.

The papers say she apparently tried to swap zipped files over a Wi-Fi network with another agent, but failed on two occasions.

After her return to Russia, she and the other spies were feted by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Chapman stayed out of the public eye until last week when she appeared at a Russian space program facility to see off cosmonauts headed for the International Space Station. An official in the space program linked her to the bank, which later issued a statement about her.

The bank said it hoped to be a reliable partner for Chapman, and that it considered her an exceptionally creative -- and what is of equal importance -- multifaceted employee who is truly concerned about the fate of Russia.

The spy ring she worked with had plenty of trouble with ad hoc wireless networking, but also left passwords written on slips of paper and couldn't get replacement laptops for months on end.

Source: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/1021...or.html?hpg1=bn