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UK's Top Police Warn That Modding Games May Turn Kids into Hackers (vice.com)
Joseph Cox, writing for Motherboard: Last week at EGX, the UK's biggest games event, attendees got a chance to play upcoming blockbusters like Battlefield 1, FIFA 17, and Gears of War 4. But budding gamers may also have spotted a slightly more unusual sight: a booth run by the National Crime Agency (NCA), the UK's leading law enforcement agency. Over the last few years, the NCA has attempted to reach out to technologically savvy young people in different ways. EGX was the first time it's pitched up to a gaming convention; the NCA said it wanted to educate young people with an interest in computers and suggested that those who mod online games in order to cheat may eventually progress to using low level cybercrime services like DDoS-for-hire and could use steering in the right direction. "The games industry can help us reach young people and educate them on lawful use of cyber skills," Richard Jones, head of the NCA's National Cyber Crime Unit's 'Prevent' team, told Motherboard in an email. "Through attendance at EGX and various other activities, we are seeking to promote ethical hacking or penetration testing, as well as other lawful uses of an interest in computers to young people," Jones said.
So why aren't they teaching game modding in high school?
bad education is turning our cops into blathering idiots.
Table-ized A.I.
Just another clickbait article from Vice, nothing to see here, move along.
I swear, there's no other journalist these days that writes more half-baked articles than Joseph Cox.
Sounds really clickbaitey.
"Modding Games May Turn Kids into Hackers" is a very different statement than "those who mod online games in order to cheat may eventually progress to using low level cybercrime services like DDoS-for-hire".
Hacking, the new gateway drug...
Other announcements from the Correlation does not imply causation department include:
Those who breathe may eventually progress becoming murderers.
Those seeking public office may eventually become corrupt.
Most parents use those games to train their kids with good reflexes and hand-eye coordination.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
The term "Mod" is abused here, when I think of a mod I think of something that is a positive effect on a game. Someone who is doing something to cheat in an online game is referred to as a hacker or cheater, not a modder.
Really should read "UK's Top Police Warn That Making Aim-Bots/Game Cheats May Turn Kids into Cyber Criminals"
I'm not an expert in sociology, but it seems plausible that unethical behavior in online video games can be a gateway to unethical online behavior in general. From a technical standpoint I know that the skills developed by hacking games are similar to the skills needed to hack financial software.
“We have undertaken analysis on pathways into cyber crime offending and can conclude that some young people who have an interest in online games may begin to participate in gaming cheat websites and ‘modding',”
This is not what most gamers think when they read "modding." I could see how some script kiddies might get their start trying to cheat at online games.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
In similar news, parents who are complete pricks do run the risk that their children grow up to be policemen.
Just.... *facepalm*
How do you even begin to argue something so breathtakingly incorrect and ignorant that it's not even wrong?
Kid's that experiment with technology may build other skills that can be used in good or malicious ways.
This may kinda, possibly, lead to kids who might at some point think of being a script kiddie. We have also found a correlation between these modders and drinking Mountain Dew. We're drawing up new legislation as we speak.
Or does this sound like somebody got their job from an uncle or maybe because they know a Lord or something (forgive me, I'm a yank) and is just looking for something to do?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
nt
Next thing you know these so-called gamers will be using Lunix.
Your actions indicate your character. Anyone that stoops so low as to cheat at a game (of all things) is pretty sad.
I mean, he's not wrong that modding games will start you down the path of understanding program exploits, and that this might eventually lead to *hat hacking, but... that's akin to saying if you play cricket, you'll eventually beat someones face in with bat: completely pointless and not at all dealing with the actual situation.
that would turn them gay, tranny, or at worst, a terrorist like Snowden. Anyone seen the movie? Rotten tomatoe! wha?
Knowing how to make things will inevitably lead people to a life of crime. Best to nip it in the bud.
According to the UK's leading law enforcement agency, kids modding games may lead to them becoming programmers. I sure hope that they can take action to prevent this. Maybe U.K.cops should start carrying guns, that seems to work pretty well over here.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The article specifically says "mod online games in order to cheat". As in wallhacking and aimbotting and all that shiz.
s/warn/brag/
s/Hackers/contributing members of society/
s/lowlife/1%/
s/iocane/iocane/
One of our pre-teens is an avid gamer, and lately, we've noticed she started complaining about getting banned from online games she plays. When we looked into it more closely, we found out most of it was for attempts at hacking. Even in Pokemon Go, she had two accounts set up .... one "regular" one, and the other she was using to hack.
She definitely exhibits the interest in manipulating software to get the results she wants, and despite our lectures about why cheating is bad, etc. -- it seems to increasingly fall on deaf ears.
Now, would I say all of this means she's headed down the road of becoming a cyber-criminal? Not exactly .... In daily life, she abides by most of the rules. She's not the type to try to steal something from a store, for example. She generally knows right from wrong. But I think when it comes to games where everything is virtual, she has a feeling, deep-down, that it's more "ok" to cheat and hack. And in 1 or 2 cases where I thought she was "permanently banned" from a game, she got her accounts back again. I'd say it's quite likely that required a bit of bending the truth to an admin somewhere, to make that happen.
So all I guess I'm saying is, there's probably kind of a mushy grey-area here. Once you start taking an interest in dishonest play in a computer game and experience the thrill of successfully beating the system to do it -- you're exhibiting the same characteristics the common criminal does (enjoys the challenge of outsmarting the system for personal gain). I think many will draw a line in the sand, deciding that for example, "copying a copyrighted piece of music is acceptable" (because you didn't actually deprive anyone else of their copy by doing it) and "cheating in games is acceptable" because they're just entertainment anyway and nobody's really getting hurt. But you have a sense of morals/ethics that says you'd stop at something that was actually emptying another person's bank account or taking tangible goods without compensating someone for them. Others won't, especially if nobody really tried to teach them right and wrong....
Marijuana is a gateway drug to hardcore drug use and therefore should be outlawed
Remember that old line? Meanwhile the people claiming that were sipping their ethanol-laced beverages or taking a drag off their cigarettes. Modding video games isn't going to create cyber-criminals any more than smoking marijuana led people to become heroin addicts; the tendency to use hard-core drugs existed in the first place. Correlation is not causation. All discouraging kids from experimenting with code is going to do is discourage them from being creative. In fact getting all serious with them about this might actually become the cause of them being criminals, seeing as how contrary and rebellious teenagers, especially teenage boys, can become. Since when did telling someone "don't do such-and-such" actually deter them, anyway?
Remember how the geniuses says playing computer games will make everyone enjoy killing? Now we have geniuses saying modding leads to hacking! Will this sort of crap ever stop?
People who are politicians, lawyers or work for advertising agencies are more likely to be douchebags and venal cork suckers...
Is your life in immediate danger, tune it at 11:00 to find out more...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
... are "corporate".
Oh God! I clicked without reading!
And I slightly modified a thing that I own!
We're monsters!
"Our NCCU officers are at @EGX until Sunday promoting ethical hacking & developing coding skills. Come say hi! #cyberchoices #EGX2016 pic.twitter.com/tubDnlYchS
— NationalCrimeAgency (@NCA_UK) September 22, 2016"
It doesn't sound like they're being quite as stupid as the summary suggests. Their concern appears to be online cheating and "unlawful internet use". That said you do have to watch for "mission creep" and random stupidity. The penetration testing statement for example indicates that they seem to only consider it lawful when done with permission of the company in question, something that given the rampant stupidity that exists in some corporations (storing personal information in the clear on a web server with a simple web address and a customer number as the only security? Non disclosure agreements of said stupidity) shouldn't by any means be a given.
I remember hacking the LHX Attack Chopper demo that was on the Big Blue discs to get the full version.
That's very interesting
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Learning to mod WILL no doubt increase the number of hackers. A small percent of those hackers may do malicious things with their hacking skill.
A greater number will learn how to improve existing software on hardware, or train hardware to do better and greater things Some will go into the maker movement, some will become programmers.
Yes, learning to mod may steer a minority of modders into doing bad things- and may steer a majority of modders INTO DOING GOOD THINGS.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
had bank accounts before they become bank robbers. Clearly we should make possession of a bank account an indicator of likelihood to rob banks.
Also, 95% of killers know how to drive, and 95% of people committing white collar crime went to college.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
If modding games might turn kids into hackers, imagine what *writing* games and apps can do.
Now I know why so there are so many expat gamers from the UK in the US and various countries in the EU.
We are the 198 proof..
https://youtu.be/fIWKMgJs_Gs?list=PL5919C8DE6F720A2D&t=237
Random nerd issues warning; Becoming a police officer may lead to abuse of power and total douchebaggery.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
It's like saying people who buy lots of tools to use in their shed, are more likely to go on to use them to murder someone, and then chop them up. More likely, people who have developed these skills, are likely to go on and find well paid and highly skilled employment, instead of following a life of crime. Crazy comments like this will also scare off potential recruits. One does wonder about the integrity of those employed by the security services, given their cooperation with the fascist Mega Stasi style mass surveillence activities of recent years. Maybe they ARE attracting all of the more 'morally flexible' hacker types, rather than the engineers of integrity that I'm used to seeing in technology companies.
Yes you little street urchin, keep quiet and let the crown monitor your every moment. Trust us, we do it for your own good. No you don't need to know how it works, besides we don't want you to learn anyway.
if your mind is set on cheating and using dishonest means of getting ahead, chances are you may apply that in more serious aspects of life eventually, rather than just video-games.
To me it seems obvious that it's true. Let's take a closer look a the claim and perhaps I can better understand your thoughts on the matter. The claim is:
> "some young people" ... who mod online games in order to cheat may eventually progress to using low level cybercrime services and could use steering in the right direction
Let's break that down and you can tell me which part you disagree with:
A) some young people mod online games in order to cheat
B) may eventually progress to using low level cybercrime
C) could use steering in the right direction - "into gaming, cyber security, law enforcement, etc where they can use their cyber skills positively to have interesting and prosperous careers."
I'm guessing (B) is where you're taking issue with the idea? I assume you agree (A) is true - some people hack games to cheat the rules. I would also assume that it's obvious that young people experimenting with hacking would use some steering in the right direction, such as careers in the gaming or security industry rather than the spamming or malware industry.
Is my guess right? Would you say it's false that some young people who hack games in order to cheat may later apply similar skills to "cheat" the law, to be involved in "low level cybercrime"?
people wth an interest in accounting or business and or politics may become criminals - well almost always in the latter two.
A post from a long long time ago.
When men were real men. Women were real women and Trolls were real trolls!
opposable thumbs and large brains, god damn them they need to be banned.
That certainly applies to mobile games where you feel you have to cheat around ridiculous limitations to even experience fun, maybe you should let her try full 3DS games where the games have better pacing and are more rewarding to play? Not ones designed to drive ad hits and statistic gathering, wanting you to churn as much as possible...
"Well, then there are those kids that start with modding and actually get a degree and come to work for us, to find the snot-nosed little...I mean growing modders who are becoming a problem. Clearly, the ones who are becoming fighters against the problem have no sway in the statistics that most are the problem."
Good!
and could use steering in the right direction.
translation: these are exactly the type of amoral scumballs we love bringing into the liars' fold.
Careful. Just because the guy in the booth says it's legal, doesn't mean some company you reveal a security issue to won't go after you guns blazing, quite possibly with their government lackeys (maybe even the same guy) coming down on you like a ton of bricks.
Leave them to sort their own shit out and don't let them sucker you into doing their work, and taking on all the risk, yourself. With the laws as muddy as they are, and so slanted toward corporate and government interests over that of regular people, it's just not worth it.
> started getting subverted into something else, once people ... started twisting it and gaming it into what they wanted it to be
Some of the things presidents have said out-loud, publicly, are kind of shocking if you understand what's actually written in the Constitution. For example:
---
the Warren Court, it wasnâ(TM)t that radical. It didnâ(TM)t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution
---
A president thinks the government needs to "break free from the essential constraints placed in the Constitution".
---
the Constitution--that it is not a static but rather a living document and must be read in the context of an ever-changing world.
---
The words of the Constitution change depending on what you want to do today, Mr. president?
You probably know that the Constitution grants to Congress the power to lay taxes and decide where the money should be spent: ...
The Congress shall have power
To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common defence and general Welfare of the United States.
No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law;
The President, on the other hand, shall âoerecommend to Congress such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient". The president makes recommendation to Congress, it is Congress who, via appropriations laws, decided how tax money will be spent.
Each time the Congress appropriated money in a way he didn't like, one president made it a habit to attach the following signing statement to the law:
"provisions of this bill purport to condition the authority of executive branch officials to spend or reallocate funds on the approval of congressional committees. ... our spending decisions shall not be treated as dependent on the approval of congressional committees."
"Our spending decisions"?!?! Read your Constitution, Mr. President. Spending decisions are made by the Congress, not by you.
Bush Jr and other presidents have been less careful than I'd like in closely following the Constitution. The quotes above are different, that's a president, President Obama, now declaring publicly that he doesn't intend to follow the Constitutional limits on his power, that he intends to "break free of the essential constraints placed in the Constitution" and make the law himself.
Good
Look up what a hacker actually is.
But no wonder, that police, government and so on fear people who can think and build things. Indepence and doing stuff yourself is dangerous! Let's consume only one devices which just allow netflix, but no pirated movies. Which track you via google/apple, but do not allow you to firewall it.
Do not mod your games, do not upgrade the pc yourself. Do not build cool stuff. Do not thing, do not question things.
I think the pigs stole the idea from here: https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Is_Your_Son_a_Computer_Hacker%3F/Original
That's like saying we shouldn't teach chemistry because kids will go all Breaking Bad... or any number of equally moronic knee-jerk reactions.
Kids should concentrate on their sewing skills.
the most dangerous hacker collective on earth..
Cheaters in online-games have already failed as human beings, because the do not understand the value of things like personal integrity, honesty or respecting your fellow human beings. They will go on to have a criminal career or one that is legal, but does massive damage to society for a comparable small personal gain. Whether they learn to code exploits or not is immaterial, these people are a massive problem because of personality-defects.
Modders on the other hand are creative people that sometime create amazing works of art and entertainment and quite often generally useful modifications. None of them cause any harm to others by that activity. They do contribute positively to society and increase their skills.
Putting these two in the same basket is about as ignorant it gets.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The same as letting kids run can turn them into bags snatchers.
> I fully expected them to be cybercriminals (stupid word though it is), but it wasn't the cheating in games that led to it. It was their life-long habits.
So you agree that the correlation is likely. Nobody claimed that one caused the other.
Aside from "Chiseling little weasels that shoplifted and vandalized for fun", there are also people who like to hack, to install Linux on their phone or DVR, to turn our Linksys router into a media server or VPN concentrator, etc. Some of us like to not only think outside the box, but twiddle with the box and make it do things it wasn't designed to do. I'm like that. I could have gone either way with that, good or bad. I ended up in network security, I'm pen testing a PCI lab today. When I was younger I worked as a locksmith because again I enjoy skillfully opening a safe without the combination, doing something you're not supposed to be able to do. Something about manipulating the mechanism of that safe appeals to me.
For me, I have to maintain the highest morals and ethics I possibly can, in order to not let the camel's nose into the tent. I live on a slippery slope, so to speak, because I enjoy the cleverness of the hack. Today, I learn how bad guys do it and come up with clever ways to defend against it. However I know that if allowed myself to become a "little bit" of a crook, I'd soon be enjoying hacking US currency by overprinting $5 bills to become $20 bills or something.
The police just saw a way to get paid to attend a gaming conference so they took it. Can you really blame them?
Kids learning to code! Imagine! Why one day they might be smarter than the police
Good lord this is fear based propaganda. Good lord the English speaking world is being overrun by right wing fear mongers AGAIN.
Yes anyone that mods a game would have just SOME of the skills requisite to performing cyber crime. Those same skills would most likely be applied to just being blue/white collar wage earning paying taxes worrying about the mortgage in 15 years time.
The missing piece of this puzzle is simple morals. How about just teaching respect and morality to children. I dare say this will have a far more positive impact on society and crime rates than this fear non-sense.
Screw them right there
Obligatory Futurama Quote : Overclockwise
Walt: We were playing video games and the other kids didn't play fair!
Mom: What?! Nobody rips off my kids but me! We can find out who they are through their motion-capture camera. It better not be those little Korean girls again.
Geez - WOW - OMG THIS is a GATEWAY DRUG for Hackers. JUST like marijuana for heroin. Wonder what the gateway drug is for politicians - - - 'I'M RIGHT, NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY' or 'IT'S MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY' or 'MY EGO IS BIGGER THAN YOURS' Almost wants you to wish for Armageddon just to get rid of these 'human' vermin / bottom-feeders.
redneck geek