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Alarm Raised On Teenage Hackers
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."
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?"
At what age does high-tech crime become legal then?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
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.
"c'mon man, just one hack, I know you can spare it! I NEED it!!"
There are cases of Immigrant smuggling where the drivers were juveniles because juveniles are much more difficult to prosecute.
That's how I'd operate if I were a fraudster - have the kids to the dirty work and give them a cut. There are hordes of bored shithead suburban kids who would love to be "elite haxxors" and they would most likely avoid prosecution the first time.
I forget the term, but there are laws on the books that state that if you are a landlord, and you continually have tenants who engage in criminal activity that the authorities can confiscate the house. It is a slow process, but the point is that if you own the property that you have some responsibility in insuring that it isn't being used for purposes that are harmful to society.
Apply that to social networking sites and...
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Problem solved?
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/103759/
I wonder if kids had some kind of job if they would be less likely to steal or break the law.
The whole of western civilisation is DOOMED!!
Or at least until the kid stumbles across some p0rn links or pictures of drunk 18 year old girls and quickly forgets all about his l337 hacking attempts.
Script kiddies have been around since the AOL days.
I didn't know AOL predated the moon landing.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Never trust anybody over 25!
...to say fuck YES, no to abstinence only education.
"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."
Well gosh darn it. We need to send them to some kind of school so they will not get caught.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I got my first computer when I was 10 around 95-96, within a year I discovered that I could pretend to be someone else by setting up a somewhat legitimate email account and sounding official. My friend and I would email tripod users, geocities users etc... posing as someone who offered free web services. Eventually we would get passwords to their accounts, change the password, and vandalize the web page (eventually we got tired of doing of this, i think we discovered girls around age 12). I didn't learn that this was called phishing until I was in high school. On the plus side it forced me to learn HTML (I wanted my vandalizing to look good), which eventually lead to a career in web development. Hopefully these delinquents can be saved too.
I grew up in Socal. Many people I knew would beige box 900 numbers to get time on a local BBS. Several got all sorts of gear, mostly paintball crap, through credit card numbers gained through dumpster diving. These were mostly 16-17 year olds doing the deed, with some doing it younger, but it's harder when you can't drive.
The temptation was huge but I managed to not give in. Heck, the temptation still is huge. Why work hard when you can make a few thousand in a few minutes? Oh yeah, because it's wrong. Sigh.
Click [link removed by administration for phishing scam} to find out more!
I used to be one, way back in about 1986 or so on my trusty little Commodore 128. Back in those days there were a few pretty incredible bulletin boards that had vast (dozens!) libraries of little tools and wrappers mostly written in bourne...(I think, this was 22 years and 7,000 joints ago, so pardon the fuzziness with some details)
I didn't really know a damn thing about shell scripts or programming (remember when they were different things?) in those days, but I knew how to change permissions on a file and execute it. And I had some vague knowledge of the basics of how computers talked to each other. And I got into all *kinds* of trouble. It was truly bitchin', and I don't regret a thing.
Script Kiddies :) I guess I was one, kinda.
I just got annoyed at people nuking other people, and one quick fix was to hack into their windows machine and change one line in system.ini
explorer=progman.exe
and then reboot the PC.
this was back in year 2k'ish
Well , you did say social sites
Slipping shoelaces ?
pictures of drunk 18 year old girls
You think they'd be interested in older women?
Thank God for 4chan & co.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Start a QA department where you pay these little guys money to hack your systems. They obviously have interests which aren't being nurtured.
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.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
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.
Let's teach them how to avoid getting caught in their K-12 Advanced computer classes. Isn't that a basic skill set these days? How to report news when a totalitarian government has blocked web access. ??? Then again, 4chan is cracking me up lately!
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.
Welcome to the new "But I'm being a parent!". Be careful what you wish for.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
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).
considered "news" I'm know this has been going on since BEFORE the internet was even available to the public. You know back when you had to dial into a BBS to communicate with other people... and swap files over a 1337 9600 bps modem
Teenagers are doing more of everything these days, not just lame DDoS. If I had to pull an explanation out of my ass, I'd blame it on the increasingly pussy parents failing to keep their kids in line, and the historic legal loophole where minors can get away with anything, with just a slap on the wrist and/or a brief stint in juvey.
The attitude is that if you're going to do stupid shit, do it before you're eligible for PMITA federal prison.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
How about Spy Kidz?
IT JUST WON'T WORK WITH0UT THE Z AT THE END!!!
Wow!! This is indeed dangerous:
"people start to swap malicious programs, knowledge and sometimes stolen data."
Where did they find the KNOWLEDGE in the first place ?
We need to fight at the source, find the KNOWLEDGE dealers and arrest them!
We need to make the fight against KNOWLEDGE a national priority, nominate a KNOWLEDGE tsar or something!
Will somebody think of the children!!
If you're under eighteen you won't be doing any time.
Hey Hey hey
Come out and play!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
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."
Get off my law... HEY GIMME MY PANTS BACK!
Free Martian Whores!
I remember back in late 80s, things were getting out of hand with newbie kiddies just getting into hacking and phreaking and playing with credit card numbers and phone codes. They were creating too much noise that made investigations of bigger fish more difficult. So law enforcement folks got credit companies to bankroll Operation Sundevil, put up a sting BBS (Phoenix Fortress) and captured a tonn of minors, most of who had files with phone codes and credit card numbers because they shotgun downloaded everything that seemed "cool". There are a bunch of honeypot sites and rooms popping up now getting ready to reel in the next crop.
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
The fact that prepubescent children are people who are most likely to be know-it-alls (not attempting to offend anyone in that age group, but it is the typical attitude) who, say, have defragged their hard drive, once, and think they're therefore computer experts. I once found on the stats panel that someone had reached my blog with the search terms 'HOW DO YOU HACK IN TO A COMPUTER'.
The fact that they've learned to Google is good, but if they can't turn Caps Lock off or pay a visit to the local library first, they have NO chances of covering their tracks when performing cybercrime.
IMHO, if they're caught, so be it. Might teach the little buggers to do their research - and that no crime is perfect and that you will get caught.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
It is always funny rewriting a script to target a groups site that was using them.
In fact, recently, this very same thing happened on 4chan, AGAIN, due to the incredibly high numbers of stupid kids on the /b/ board who actually listen to instructions.
God, the amount of people who downloaded and ran that script... such a high number of idiots in one place is astounding, and somewhat depressing.
in doing it loudily and clumsily, rather than discreetly and quietly
i didn't ascribe pure motivations to teenaged script kiddies, i ascribed stupidity. of course, some of them are still downright evil in their efforts. but still stupid. better to catch what they are doing now, while they are dumb about it and easier to catch, no?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You're right. What I did meant to say was, "...even back since...". The AOL era was just when people were starting to get personal home connections and our culture was starting to accommodate the internet more. I didn't mean that script kiddies started arising in that era.
I have to admit, I do look upon some of my script kiddie days with a bit of nostalgia as well :)
wow this SlashingDot site looks kool so many other uber hakkers!
someboyd email me their exploitz qwik, I have 9, we share long time, you can reach me at douglaslewis (at) comcast (dot) com, that's not my real name, itz my dadz, so you can't find me, oh and I post here anonymousely, so the fedz kant get me nor reed diz sekrit msg
ok back to myspace, pm you later
This just in: Kids more likely to be mischievous than adults. More at 11:00.
This means that law enforcement will spend all their time going after this low-hanging fruit, and the public's fear will be assuaged because of all the "hackers" that are getting put in juvie - while the real troublemakers are left completely alone.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
So like John Connor when he was a teenager?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Dude, you just admitted to hacking and smoking pot in the same post. Answer the door, it's the FBI trying to distract you while the NSA plants illegal wiretaps on your phone.
There is no need to wiretap a phone when the NSA is the phone company. That's why Bush can comfortably say they don't do any wiretapping.
Bah - look at my posting history and you'll get my full name, the company I work for, the fact that I've taken a lot of LSD, admissions of criminal activity relating to computer fraud (for large sums of money) that I was never charged for and a LOT more.
Thankfully, there's absolutely nothing anyone can realistically do to me with all of this information that would bother me in the slightest.
Live life without secrets, and there's nothing that can be stolen from you.
(note: I do not live in, or ever intend on living in, the United States of America)
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Stay off of my lawn!
Have gnu, will travel.
That water is wet. For crying out loud...wasn't this fairly obvious? Of course, you have real hackers, who hack things like Xboxen and PS3's to make them run homebrew (and in the process, learning a lot) and you have the ones who see the criminal potential. You know, kind of like the kids who enjoy testing security at the mall versus the ones who like shoplifting.
This is not a new phenomenon.
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
I found my self in the same boat back in college. I had discovered the workstations were caching passwords when i was looking for a way to elevate my local user privileges to use my "new" 64mb pen drive:-) So when i alerted the IT staff of the cached passwords the ax came down on me fast and hard. I must say i was and still am surprised at how bad that pissed them off. However i did escape w/ a slap on the wrist thanks to some great teachers i had as a character reference. But i learned my lesson, if i see something that isn't right security wise i don't say anything and make sure my information isn't comprimized.
Touche!
Yes hiding it as a txt files in the windows directory LOLZ