It’s a long story how I got there, but I found this gem of a post over at the pcianswers.com blog. The post by cmark relates his training and experiences as a sniper to that of the motivation and skills of a malicious hacker. I admit, in another life I’d love to give the life of a sniper a try. Not because of the stereotypical “lone gun” persona, but rather because of the patience, intelligence, and autonomy required, which does fit my personality. Some brief quotes:

By evaluating the terrain on a map, we could determine the ‘natural lines of drift’ with some accuracy. Many people may not know this but Humans drift toward the path of least resistance. Humans traveling would naturally drift toward these lines. By understanding these drift lines, you can determine where a patrol will move, get ahead of them and intercept their movement.

Sounds familiar in business as well. In fact, I see this daily from normal users to technical workers to offsite workers to highly skilled software developers. They will drift towards least resistance.

As a sniper, I only need one small mistake. I would wait and watch until a unit made a mistake or exposed a vulnerability. To protect against me, a unit had to be nearly perfect. They had to cover all vulnerabilities and make no mistakes. (does this sound familiar?)

Point well made, from personal experience!

So what is the best defense against snipers or hackers? Quit simply, other snipers or hackers. US sniper doctrine states that the best defense against a sniper is another sniper. They possess the same skills, and mentality and can counter the snipers’ actions and operations.

And there’s the discussion-starter!