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UK's Top Police Warn That Modding Games May Turn Kids into Hackers (vice.com)

Posted by msmash on from the topsy-turvy-world dept.

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.

11 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Valuable skills by WarJolt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So why aren't they teaching game modding in high school?

    1. Re:Valuable skills by gnick · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Learning tech skills and becoming a "hacker" doesn't seem negative at all to me until it's coupled with "low level cybercrime." I think a better summary of this "study" is:

      Cheaters may later become law breakers.

      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
    2. Re:Valuable skills by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Given the MPs we have a better slogan would be: "Cheaters may later become law makers".

  2. In other news by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    bad education is turning our cops into blathering idiots.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re:In other news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Almost, the education system fails everyone, and the kids turn to video games.

      Some of them figure out how to mod the games and then turn into t3h 3vi1 h4x0rz later in life.

      The others, who couldn't figure out how to download and install cheat mods start to yell "H4xor! BAN HAMMER!" and later become cops. When said cops still don't receive the respect from society which they feel they deserve, they start to shoot minorities during traffic stops while yelling "GUN!".

      The solution? Who knows, but we'll try to find something to ban.

    2. Re: In other news by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Uniformed opinions?

      Not all opinions are based on facts. Donald Trump is a perfect example of that.

  3. clickbait article from Vice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  4. Clickbait? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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".

  5. Misleading Title by nateman1352 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  6. Re:Hacking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'll leave this here:

    https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

  7. "Marijuana is a gateway drug" by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?