Bored of mugging, teenagers turn to hacking
By Dave Parrack
It seems that mugging people on the street isn’t good enough for the youth of today. Instead they are increasingly turning to hacking and technology-related crime for both their kicks and to make some money. However, some are so bad at it, or brag about their endeavors so readily that they get caught easily.
As technology improves and becomes more of a day to day element of our lives, it is almost inevitable that criminals will increasingly turn to cyber crime. It’s already happened, with hacking and phishing attempts happening all the time, no matter where you are in the world. But as well as the organized criminal gangs, there’s a new wave of cyber criminals emerging: teenagers.
Young people have always adapted to new technology quicker than older people, it has something to do with their brains being more open to learning and retaining new information. But while that may be a good thing when a youngster is able to show his grandparents how to operate a DVD player, it’s not such a good thing when the youth of today decide to use technology for their own ends.
According to a report on BBC News, that’s exactly what is happening, with computer security professionals apparently noticing the upswing in the number of youngsters populating Internet forums to share stolen credit card details, hacking tips, and phishing tools.
Luckily for those of us who use the Web but don’t harbor any great desire to be a master criminal, most of the youngsters starting to see the appeal of hacking aren’t actually very good at it. Some are so bad that Symantec has many examples of teenagers who have ruined their own computer while trying to write and manage a virus.
Another reason many new hackers and phishers get caught is down to their desire to win recognition for their exploits. YouTube is full of videos demonstrating a hacking attempt, but the uploaders often use the same alias or IP address that they used to launch the attack and therefore get caught.
The problem is that for all of the teenagers who are too dumb to be successful cyber criminals, there will be some who do manage to learn the protocols and skills required to become very good at it. And that could mean Web users are going to face renewed and improved efforts to scam them in the years to come.
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Mildred: What’re you rebelling against, Johnny? Johnny: Whaddya got?
October 28th, 2008
A new generation of “online hoodies” is wreaking havoc in cyberspace, Internet security experts are warning.
The hackers, some as young as 12, begin by breaking into newspaper production systems and replacing news of substance with ridiculous headlines such as “Scientists discover breasts cause cancer,” “Sexism confirmed by evolutionary biologists,” “Sarah Palin exists” or “Online hoodies stalking the web” in an attempt to outrage people into clicking on them.
When they do, the ridiculous message promptly causes a buffer overload in the reader’s brain, filling it with an overflow of nonsense and causing them to think such ideas are reasonable, sane and even interesting. In the final stages of an infection, the victim clicks repeatedly on TMZ, hoping for upskirt shots of Britney Spears or Paris Hilton.
Hacker “wins” of late have included breaking into the Republican National Committee and replacing its phone scripts with patently insane slanders and mudslinging against Barack Obama, and engineering the hilarious placement of an idiot Alaskan redneck as a Vice-Presidential candidate.
“We need them out on the streets,” said Kevin Hogan of Symantec, “using their energy and practicing their knife skills, not sitting at home getting obese.”
My blog rant: http://tinyurl.com/54t2un