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.

Comments

Re:Valuable skills

[Anonymous Coward]

Because in the UK computer "education" runs to using outlook, word and access.

Anyone with an aptitude for programming is to be discouraged.

This may be somewhat accurate ....

[King_TJ]

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....

Re:This may be somewhat accurate ....

[tomxor]

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

Her instincts and morals are good and are like most technical people, they can tell the difference between virtual and non-virtual, the true harm (if any) and consequences are understood. Hacking games never harmed anyone and should never carry severe consequences, at most you don't get to play that game anymore or have to pay for a new account, yes it's ethically wrong within the context of a game... but that's the point it's just a game, when someone cheats at monopoly they don't go to jail or get extortionate and real fines... people just don't play with them.

Of course we know hacking can have serious consequences, if it's connected to something real and dangerous, but when you hack that stuff you will know it... the problem is outsiders who can't tell the difference, it's black and white hacking === evil to them, the best we can do for those people is say hacking is a broad term: it's like "mechanic", a mechanic can fix cars and tinker with them, make them run in ways their manufacturer never intended because they have explored how these things work, but that's ok. Their knowledge also gives them the ability to modify cars in specific dangerous ways that to intentionally harm a driver... your mechanic at your local garage could do that...