Alarm Raised On Teenage Hackers 213
Arno Igne writes to tell us that the number of underage participants in "high-tech" crimes has risen steeply in recent history. Reporting children as young as 11 swapping credit card details and asking for hacks, many are largely unskilled and thus more likely to get caught and arrested. "Communities and forums spring up where people start to swap malicious programs, knowledge and sometimes stolen data. Some also look for exploits and virus code that can be run against the social networking sites popular with many young people. Some then try to peddle or use the details or accounts they net in this way. Mr Boyd said he spent a lot of time tracking down the creators of many of the nuisance programs written to exploit users of social networking sites and the culprit was often a teenager."
Re:Using kids (Score:2, Informative)
Yep. This is how a lot of the G's do drug smuggling and some other 'dirty' work of running a gang -- get the underage kids to do it. They get busted, they won't do time, and therefore it's a lot harder to get them to squeal. Ya gotta keep 'em separated!
Of course these aren't your average run-of-the-mill parent-fearing suburban kids either. They're usually the problem-case kids.
Re:Gosh, underage hackers with no skill? (Score:1, Informative)
we have another term for them Crackers.
Hackers are something else completely and they are /not/ criminals.
Re:I forget the term... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Jobs for Kids (Score:1, Informative)
Not in Nevada,
Re:This is new? (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, man. Mentioning AIM punters brings back the old memories of being a script kiddie myself. I had a nice collection of those things as a kid.
I remember finding out about an exploit where IMing someone a certain 5 digits followed by a semicolon instantly crashed their client. I would go into one of the chat rooms, make grandiose false claims (such claiming to be a "super genius"), and then use it on anyone who disagreed with me. A moment or so after I would do it, everyone would see my target silently wink out of the chat room. The client locked up and froze before even showing the IM window I had sent, so the victim had no idea what was going on.
Letting an idiot 12-year old wield that power was like throwing gasoline on a fire.
Re:Gosh, underage hackers with no skill? (Score:3, Informative)
In the olden days of BBSs, we used to call them "ruggies" which was short for "rug rats". But "script kiddies" is even more accurate of a description, seeing they are basically just following along a "recipe" for cracking something.
Re:Targetting them, due to their own idiocy. (Score:4, Informative)
That's why they're called /b/tards.
Re:Gosh, underage hackers with no skill? (Score:4, Informative)
Makes sense to me. Most things are legal until you use them to do something stupid.