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."
Gosh, underage hackers with no skill? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish we had a term to describe that... something that notes the fact they are younger, and simple in their skills... Maybe "script kiddies?"
This is new? (Score:5, Insightful)
Script kiddies have been around since the AOL days. Hell, I myself got a juvenile laugh out of punters (remember those? God, the AIM clients were so terrible back then) and other "progs".
Mostly I imagine the vast majority of this stuff nowadays is myspace-related. Probably kids trying to break into someone else's myspace page because they're little drama whores like that.
Ummm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem solved?
Re:"Underage"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ha! good point.
I guess once you are 18 you are no longer too young to go to a federal prison.
Re:I forget the term... (Score:3, Insightful)
Apply to ISPs also. Problem is today that most ISPs actively shield users on their system which engage in malicious activity.
The answer is always they will not cooperate without a court order. Of course, if the police ask nicely they cooperate without a court order. But after a system is broken into unless there is at least $25,000 in provable damages you aren't going to get anyone in law enforcement interested. And that is just the beginning.
So if someone is downloading child porn, the police are right there on that. If they break into your system and cause hours of downtime nothing happens. This can be considered to be tacit encouragement. Helping the folks learn about computers. Roughly the same way that gangbangers learn about automatic weapons.
if you can't or won't (Score:5, Insightful)
find a flaw in the system, the flaw will be found by someone else
the nice thing about kids being the perps is that there is no more nefarious purpose than "i did for the lulz". do you really think if these teenagers weren't loudly and clumsily exploiting security holes that someone else with much more nefarious purposes is not expoliting the same security holes quietly and discreetly?
consider kids hacking websites to be that website's security research division. the flaws are found, the flaws are fixed, everyone makes out better. thank god for loud dumb scrit kiddies
seriously, script kiddies are a blessing. they provide incentive to harden your website, incentive that some websites don't have and apparently need
been around for a long time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I forget the term... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I forget the term... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is new? (Score:3, Insightful)
yea, what bunch of sensationalized garbage. i'd expect this from FOX news, but not from the BBC.
teenagers have always been mischievous, and all hackers start as teenagers. most hackers grow out of malicious/immature behavior by adulthood, so naturally most phishers/crackers/virus writers/script kiddies/etc. are going to be teenagers.
heck, it's our teenage rebelliousness that motivates us to try new things. even though teenagers can be mischievous, it's usually pretty harmless stuff. when i was a in elementary school and junior high i used to write trojans, progs/punters/scrollers, mail bombers, etc. that's what motivated me to learn how to program. and i'm sure there are many others out there who were the same way.
it's the script kiddies that grow up to become spammers that we need to worry about. they cause the most damage and are a much bigger nuisance and societal problem than mischievous teenage hacker-wannabes. greed-driven malice is much more dangerous than curiosity-driven mischief.
Parents? (Score:3, Insightful)
This probably boils down to parents that are clueless. "But he was only playing on his computer!"
So parents need to be educated that there's more you can do with a PC and an Internet connection than browse and play WoW.
Re:Oh no, 11 years old trying to hack social sites (Score:5, Insightful)
Back when I was a kid, it was those skills that we had to develop to GET the pr0n! When the biggest source was a local BBS with a reasonably vigilant sysop, we had to get creative. It taught me a little about social engineering... like if you registered with a totally unpronounceable foreign name, the sysop would just validate you without a phone call because he didn't want to mispronounce it.
Wargames anybody? (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, this has been how it is since the early 80s. 25 years ago it was the teenagers who were war-dialing and breaking into time-sharing systems. They're the ones who've got free time for it. As you get older you get into college or into a job and you've got a lot less free time for messing around like that. It only makes sense, then, that school kids would be one of the two major groups doing this (the other being those adults for whom this kind of crime is their job).
Re:if you can't or won't (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ummm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Problem solved?
More like problem created. When 16-year-old criminals discover exactly how much less severe the punishment is for them than 18-year-olds, they all have the same thought: "Crap! I've got less than 2 years to get good at this!"
Re:Gosh, underage hackers with no skill? (Score:5, Insightful)
No reason to go after the guy who makes vehicles. Go after the guy who used it to run someone off the road.
No reason to go after the guy who makes whiskey. Go after the guy who used it to beat someone with.
Your argument goes both ways sir.
Re:Gosh, underage hackers with no skill? (Score:1, Insightful)
Dream on, you hoopy frood. In a better universe perhaps.
Re:Gosh, underage hackers with no skill? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I had a friend get caught for credit card fraud in middle school. The days of AOL were full of script kiddies. This stuff is old news.
Re:Kids swapping KNOWLEDGE! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Kids swapping KNOWLEDGE! (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't talk to your children about KNOWLEDGE, who will?
Re:Gosh, underage hackers with no skill? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you'll agree that hacking and phreaking is different than some n00b using scripts to commit electronic crimes. Hacking something just for the sake of doing it, to learn how it works and to poke around in forbidden space, is different than stealing credit card numbers so you can buy the latest ecksbawks game.
Hacking is still illegal, but but it's not necessarily malicious, like stealing and using someone's credit card number.
Re:Using kids (Score:2, Insightful)