DNS enumeration (brute force) with a good wordlist, zone transfer, or leaking the name through a certificate served when accessing your host via IP address are all possibilities.
The name "userfileupload" is far from not-obvious, so that would be my guess.
The important distinction, and where the comparison might fall short as the job-advertisement purpose of this post, is motivation. Speedrunners enjoy games because games are fun. Speedrunners get to actually use these vulnerabilities in a way that is meaningful in their lives, whereas vulnerability researchers typically don't.
This is an observation about cyber security in general, but in my experience, bug hunting and reverse engineering require a lot of tenacity at a level that writing software and other areas of IT do not. I think tenacity is a difficult thing to summon if your only tangible motivation is a salary, the target software is intrinsically boring, and you know that you'll be rewarded whether or not you find the bugs.
Forgive me if, in the current political climate, I feel a very large amount of skepticism at an opening paragraph where an anonymous woman of color expresses that she's always had it easy in the tech industry because of "DEI".
To me it looks more like a continuation of the decline of brick and mortar retail. Even if I want to watch films on blue-ray, why would I ever want to drive to a Best Buy to purchase them?
The only thing motivated here is your implication that the answer must be one of these two reductive answers, while so many commenters have given very reasonable and valid reasons for their opinion.
I don't understand the part about the market accepting the price, or rather, I find it hard to believe that it's sustainable. I've played PC games my whole life and used to enjoy building and re-building my gaming PC every so often. Paying 2k for a single piece of hardware just doesn't seem like the right choice anymore. Makes more sense to buy a console (or two) these days.
There are many factors that contribute to being good to your job, or I think more accurately, being perceived as being good at your job. Impossible deadlines, unrealistic client expectations, bad organizational policies and procedures... the list goes on. I'd argue that being nice to people is always your choice, whereas being perceived as competent is not always up to you.
Measuring performance is also not entirely straightforward and objective as we want it to be, and the two axes may blend into each other when it comes time for reviews. In a peer review scenario, that nice colleague gets a boost.
There are also varying degrees and types of incompetence. If someone is willing to learn, that's a lot different than someone who is knowingly slacking off and relying on others to pick up the slack. I'd argue that the latter is not exactly "nice" behavior.
> Honestly, Americans are getting hard. They were soft when they allowed themselves to be pushed around, jobs outsourced, sign 4 year non-competes and non-disparage agreements, and put up with crappy bosses with no cost of living increases, and sexually harassed in the office by their boss.
Couldn't agree more. It's almost comical how these owners and managers are resorting to juvenile, schoolyard bully tactics against workers who are finally standing up for themselves and demanding more.
"Aw, you won't eat that bug? It's because you're scared isn't it? Wow, I didn't know you were so such a scaredey-cat!"
"Aw, 2 hours a day is too much to commute? Sounds like you don't even wanna work. Wow, I didn't know you were so lazy!"
What continues to amuse me is that this is still being framed as an ongoing debate. It's really not a debate; this is outdated leadership fighting against social and technological progress, while demanding that their employees give up the personal freedom they've enjoyed for the past few years.
Unless you're one of a handful of massive, highly desirable tech employers, it's probably time to adapt. If you're a city relying on a massive pool of office workers doing a thing workers don't need to do anymore, it's probably time to adapt as well.
It seems silly to make this argument specifically regarding time when we've structured our society in such a way that certain people's time and labor is more valuable than other peoples'. Why not apply this logic to say restaurant workers, nurses, retail employees etc. deserve to make as much money as software engineers?
Not that I'd disagree with that. Personally, I think it's absurd that someone writing JavaScript for an advertising company for a few hours a day should make more money than a nurse.
And yet with all of these scenarios you've described, the world keeps spinning.
I've yet to see an example of of a company or product that has suffered due to knowledge workers realizing they can use WFH to put in fewer hours and make time to handle their actual important life tasks.
Really surprisingly low number here. $3.5 million doesn't seem like a lot to spend considering what I imagine they'd lose if they lost this tax-prep business. Did we lose a zero somewhere?