Interesting that people sophisticated enough in internet routing protocols to squat on unused IP space can get paid more working for spammers than legitimate companies.
BGP is actually a pretty simple routing algorithm once you get your head around it. Certainly no harder than OSPF. I got my head around it originally back in the late 1990s and haven't touched it since and still can remember big parts of how it works.
Spam pays a lot. I mean, like, a lot. So it doesn't surprise me that some people can basically choose their own hours, work on something challenging and get paid well for doing it, all for a crime that Russia will never extradite them for, is going to be happier doing that than sitting in an office 9-5 and every other week on 24x7 on-call babysitting some Cisco firewalls.
It'd be interesting to figure out where their money is coming from. A guess (completely speculative) is that these aren't pure spamming operations, but rather sending spam as one piece of a spam/botnet/phishing mess.
Spam pays a lot. I mean, like, a lot. So it doesn't surprise me that some people can basically choose their own hours, work on something challenging and get paid well for doing it, all for a crime that Russia will never extradite them for, is going to be happier doing that than sitting in an office 9-5 and every other week on 24x7 on-call babysitting some Cisco firewalls.