Slashdot Mirror
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."
At what age does high-tech crime become legal then?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
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
I wonder if kids had some kind of job if they would be less likely to steal or break the law.
I survived the eighties one time already. The early days of the Ma Bell breakup coincided with dialup BBSs. Now, there were any number of long-distance companies (MCI, Sprint, whatever) that had dialup portals (since they could be hard-switched for some reason), and they gave their clients six-digit identifier pins. So basically any kid with a modem and half a brain (yes, half a brain, since a full one would realize the trouble) could commit wire fraud, and some of us did. Once you got on those BBSs, what would you talk about?
Then there were the glories of carbon-transfer paper and the mall dumpsters (away from the food court ones). Dumb kids + tech = felonies ahoy! It's been like that for decades.
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.
Yeah , this is really worth a 'nothing to see here , move along'.
I mean , this is nothing new . It's been that way for over a century.
I don't like that they track down the 'creator's of those nuisance programs ' , though . Programming these things is a fun way of learning how it works.
They should be going after the people who USE it for malicious purpose instead.
I mean , maybe we should just lock up the creators of the Windows API , because you can really do some damage with that.
Slipping shoelaces ?
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.
A good analogy might be immunisation. The script kiddies present the network with a weakened form of potentially dangerous attacks, so that it can learn to defend itself. I'm not sure where Jenny McCarthy comes in, but I'm sure I'll figure out a way to make that happen.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
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.
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.
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
Move to one of the states in the link I provided and you can.
Step 1. Fill out ATF form 4 (which includes fingerprint card and $200 tax.)
Step 2. Wait 1 week to 6 months for approval and buy NFA item when the ATF grudgingly accepts that you aren't a felon, insane, or for some other reason not allowed to own Title 2 hardware.
Step 3. Don't profit (Full auto: nothing makes a paycheck disappear faster.)
---- Liquid was a patriot ----