Should I include controversial achievements in my resume?

Question

I'm writing a resume for a position in computer security software development. Should I include the facts of slightly borderline nature I'm well proud of?

For instance, I've programmed and currently running one of the most elusive and notorious aimbots on a quite popular virtual combat simulation platform - about 10,000 lines of C++ and counting. I also played with a few websites of the "show your achievements" nature - never did any damage, just sort of tricked them with some minor scripting into ranking my (admittedly fictitious) achievements #1 worldwide.

I'm perfectly sure that nothing of this is sueable, but is it worth adding to my resume?

Answer 1

Not on your resume.

People seem to be worked up about this. Aim bot is not allowed on most if not all sites by the terms of services and by blocking them. Aim bot is not criminally illegal that I am aware of. Use can get you a life time ban.

If, during a technical interview, they ask if you have any penetration / avoidance experience you might tell them. You might want to be careful - it’s more of a no than a yes.

I understand and respect that a lot of people don't like the morality of it, but it is relevant experience - former hackers do sometimes get hired by security firms.

A poker bot can be illegal due to the laws enforced by the relevant gambling control board(s). The site may seize your funds based on the terms of service / use contract.

I am getting comments about the morality of aim bots. My answer is not about morality, and I chose to neither give my opinion, nor take part in that discussion. There are other answers that focus on morality. My answer is that most people would consider it immoral, but it is relevant experience.

Answer 2

I'm a gamer and somewhat skilled (white hat) hacker.

If I got that on a resume(the aimbot), I'd burn it and use the ashes to fertilize the poison ivy growing near the office. If I were you, I'd list any white hat achievements, if any that you have. If you have none, then it's time for some, because destructive hacks (and yes, aimbots are destructive) do not get you anything but scorn in the professional world.

It's not "controversial" it's unprofessional, unethical, and indicative of low character, and borderline illegal. Put the positive items on, build a sniffer to root out bots, and patches to cover vulnerabilities. THAT shows talent. Anyone can break something, it takes a special kind of craft and intelligence to guard against it.

Answer 3

No, you shouldn't.

It's an impressive accomplishment, to be sure. Very few people in the world write successful aimbots. But it is not experience that's particularly relevant to many jobs - even in the games industry. It does show initiative and a self-starter mentality, but it also shows some disregard for the rules - if you're willing to violate the terms of a EULA (by a lot), how can I be sure you won't treat the employee handbook the same way? It brings up more questions about you than it answers, and they're not questions that are likely to make you look good.

I definitely wouldn't mark it against you immediately, there are great reasons for wanting to write aimbots - such as "because it was a really difficult and interesting problem that I didn't know how to solve". But you shouldn't necessarily rely on all your interviewers being that thoughtful - you can already see a few kneejerk answers which recoil at the very mention.

So - no. Because ultimately you will be risking more than you might gain from putting it on the resume.

Answer 4

Unless you wish to work for a company that is borderline on legality then this is a very good way to never be hired. You want to be hire-able to a favorable outcome for the company. Getting someone who is good at doing borderline illegal activity is probably not the best move.

If you want to call out security skills related to the abilities this developed in you then do that, but don't publicize borderline illegal activity as a reason to be hired. Also, you want to be careful there too as if you do get prosecuted your likelihood of job security drastically goes down from there.

Answer 5

You should include this on your resume. I say this both as someone who wrote a similar bot when I was in college, and as someone who regularly does interviews. Regardless of how anyone feels about video games or cheating, there are countless positives here and you'd be foolish to ignore them. Focus on those positives.

When I interview people, particularly people without a lot of experience, I want to know that they can do more than just study for, and pass exams. I also want someone who enjoys technology, who will learn on their own, who can take on large tasks.

Your project can show me ALL OF THAT. And if you don't have a lot of experience, there might not be anything else you can point to.

I wouldn't recommend saying 'I wrote an aimbot' and I don't know the details of your project (though I'm sure there are some really interesting things you could say about it)...but let me use mine as an example:

MyAwesomeProgram
(2012-2014)

• Developed and maintained a large commercial C# application that was responsible for the automation of repetitive tasks within the Windows OS via WIN32 API calls.
• Utilized various machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to achieve a high level of autonomy with minimal human interaction.
• Released as an open-source project in 2013 where I continued to coordinate the efforts of others on the project.
• Over 500 sales and free 150,000 downloads

Oh sure, it's just a 'bot' to cheat at a game. But, aside from that, it's also all of the things many companies are looking for. If I read something like this, you're demonstrating so many of the things I look for in an applicant and it gives me all sorts of probing questions that will let you demonstrate your level of knowledge.

Unless you have really impressive other things to fill out your resume, I would include it.

Answer 6

Although there are cases of hackers being hired by security companies or governement agencies (the latter being by definition very few communicated), I think this only applies to the ones who are actually considered among the best in their field, when they're not geniuses.

I doubt that cheating a game (how does that even remotely relate to security?) or tricking a website by using "minor scripting" would get you recognized as such, and surely won't get you any job. There are so many positive ways to use your skills, if you want to tell about something in your resume, maybe you should pick one of these and write 10000 lines of code for it.

The simple fact you're asking the question and use the word "controversial", which is an euphemism for the least, shows I think you already know the answer.

Answer 7

Do it!

But... do it right. And, like everything else in your resume, only do it if it will be beneficial.

It all depends on how you pitch it. For instance, don't say, "I wrote an aimbot". (Unless you expect the hiring staff to not comprehend an aimbot, or at least the controversial aspect of that.) Look at how much negative responses showed up on this Stack Exchange question. You want to avoid that.

Instead: You could claim that you wrote a program that assists people with a handicap (e.g., being human and inferior to machines) so that they could use a mouse more effectively. People using this popular program have been more successful... etc. etc.

Okay, so I confess: I was just having a bit of fun with that last paragraph. Really, don't actually say that on your resume. The problem with that paragraph is that it seems too misleading (suggesting being helpful with disabilities). Being detected as an intentional misleader will not help your cause. However, speaking seriously again, there are ways to pitch things by using ethical, moral, honest descriptions that will help your cause.

As a person who had done some hiring and assisted with some more hiring, I find that a lot of resumes fail to describe activity in a useful way. I'm talking about spin, here. I'm not talking about dishonesty. Heaven forbid (literally).

As an example, I'm involved with IT. A lot of young people want to get into the field, with little background in the computer field. I'd like to see someone who demonstrates an understanding of business goals, including the goals of my business.

Examples:

• If you worked at a fast food restaurant, I don't want to see: "Made hamburgers faster than everyone else." I'm not in the hamburger business. What do I care?
  • I want to see: "Reduced required time for product assembly, resulting in product being hand-delivered more quickly and customer satisfaction going up."
• If you worked at a car wash, I don't want to see: "Rinsed cars with fewer errors per week than co-workers."
  • I want to see: Cleaned equipment with superior levels of adhering to company standards

I'm not trying to promote using unfamiliar vocabulary to impress people, nor am I suggesting that you try try to twist facts in a way that is only slightly misleading. If you see what I wrote, it is an absolutely honest way of describing what happened. However, it describes things in a way that demonstrates that when my boss tells me to make hamburgers, I don't just get so focused on my experience that I describe things from my perspective. Instead, I acknowledge the company's perspective by describing things in a way that might sound a bit more useful to the company I want to work for.

Does the company I want to work for have customers? Do they care about quality? Do they care about working efficiently (faster, or with fewer resources)? Describe how your activity helped to achieve some good goals that will be commonly appreciated.

If you can, describe your efforts in a way that applies to the company you want to work for. If that doesn't seem possible (because the company you want to work for is a very different type of company), at least show that you can explain things in a way that sounds appealing to a manager. At least then I will know that you can understand a manager's perspective, and you'll be head and shoulders above others who don't seem to understand what a manager would want to see.

For instance, I've programmed and currently running one of the most elusive and notorious aimbots on a quite popular virtual combat simulation platform - about 10,000 lines of C++ and counting

"I successfully created and released a working program that enhances the experience of other popular software. My project includes thousands of lines of computer code, and continues to work well despite evolving challenges that result from how the software is used on various networks."

I also played with a few websites of the "show your achievements" nature - never did any damage, just sort of tricked them with some minor scripting into ranking my (admittedly fictitious) achievements #1 worldwide.

No, don't say that. What you did may be a crime. Even if it wasn't, it sounds like something that many people will think was criminal. Don't say that.

"I identified the limits of what can be supported by some online databases, and through my own private exploration I became familiar with some identified real-world vulnerabilities on actual publicly deployed websites."

As a general rule, you should be prepared to discuss anything on your resume during your interview. Manipulating public competition, in the ways you describe, is not generally viewed as admirable. Before considering your resume to be finalized, put some thought into what can be safe to discuss, and what might not be. If something isn't beneficial to you to discuss, determine a sensible reason why you might want to limit such a discussion. ("Because of concerns of potential misuse, I'm limiting some details from widespread public disclosure. However, if I do get hired, I will be able to verify every statement I provided.")

Answer 8

Maybe in a portfolio. But not in the resume.

If your code is open source you could publish it on GitHub and provide your GitHub username in the resume.

Answer 9

I think you should consider reframing this experience. What's unethical is using this tool to cheat in multiplayer games, or selling access to others in order that they may do that, without opponents' knowledge, in order to achieve results you could not otherwise achieve. Building an aimbot is not, in and of itself, unethical. In fact, video games are often used as a showcase for software techniques -- for example, this article about using machine learning to beat human players at Super Smash Brothers. Taking it online may even be "borderline" acceptable if the goal is just proving that it works and not getting to the top of the leaderboards. I think if you can frame the product as more of a proof of concept than a grey-market commercial product then it would be worthwhile to talk about.

Answer 10

Of course! You should not just throw away your valuable C++ experience like that!

What you have been doing is called: "writing accessibility software, assisting impaired people in using real-time online services". This is both legal and perfectly morally acceptable (unless you have used it yourself, or personally encouraged non-impaired people to violate game's TOS).

Don't delve too deeply in exact details, there is no reason to explain your employers, that this particular software have been mainly used by bunch of as@$#es to cheat in a video game. Do not link to source code and especially do not mention the name of aimbot software. In such cases it is customary to refer to vague "non-disclosure agreement" and otherwise weasel your way out of telling exact details. Just let them know, that you have written modestly sized software in C++, and let your skills be a sufficient testament to the truth of such claims.