Some days ago, a 25 years old chinese programmer named Li Jun, has been sentenced to four years of prison. Li Jun is the writer of the famous "Fujacks" computer virus, also known as "Panda Burns Joss Stick". Three of his friends, Wang Lei, Zhang Shun and Lei Lei, have also been sentenced in the same case.

The virus had been sold by Li Jun and his accomplices, and had made them earn between 100 000 and 200 000 yuan (12 500-25 000 dollars). Once a machine was infected with Fujacks, it was changing the icon of every infected program. The new icon was a panda holding joss sticks. It was also stealing private information from users.

Earlier this year, Li Jun had written a software solution to clean infected machines from his virus, following a request from the Chinese authorities. It seems that the prosecutor didn't really take this into account.

Now what is more disturbing is that quite immediately after this judgement, Li Jun saw himself "spammed" with job offers from IT companies. A company hit by the malware has offered Li Jun a position of technology director, including a salary of a million yuan ($130.000) a year, after hearing that Li Jun had programmed the virus because he was bored of not finding a job, according to the Changjiang Times. About ten companies have also offered jobs to the malware author.

This idea of "doing the worst to get the best" is very disturbing in the IT field. There have been numerous cases through the last twenty years showing that some malicious programmers could get real good jobs, and this affair is surely not the only one this year. 17 years old Georges Hotz is another example of a sudden job success. By breaking the iPhone lock protection, making it able to be used on any operators, Georges was offered a job at Certicell, as a consultant.

These are only two cases amongst many. Of course, when someone is sentenced to prison and comes back to society, he should be fully reintegrated into it. But coming back from prison and getting a juicy job could give ideas to a lot of other programmers, bored of being jobless. Especially in countries where laws are unexistent or very accomodating with such cases...