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."

Comments

Re:Gosh, underage hackers with no skill?

[phulegart]

{sarcasm}

Riiiight...
and there's no reason to remind people of what's currently going on in the world... because everyone regularly proves that they will remember it all, guaranteed.

Oh... and no reason to go after the person who creates the virus. Only the person who uses it against others.

No reason to go after the guy who makes pipe bombs either. Just the guy who uses them.

No reason to go after the guy who makes the full-auto conversion kits. Just the guy who applies them to the off-the-shelf weapon.

No reason to go after the guy who makes the fake passports. Just the guy who uses one.

Oh, and why stop at the creator of the windows API? Why not go after the inventor of the computer? {/sarcasm}