Is your child a hacker?

Elsewhere

I'm over 60 and I wouldn't know how to start now, but back in the 70's it was easy-peasy . Yes, it is rather like dismantling something to see how it works (my childhood was littered with debris from clocks, old valve radios, cameras... typewriters...)

I remember getting access to the file that held details of all the employee salaries where I worked at the time!!!

pendragon_arther

How did you know my kid's name is timmy? :eek:

marleyboy

Meh, we used to hack when we were kids. In those days the most you could do was work out how to break into a computer game and change the graphics or adjust the scores. Hacking is nothing new and is not likely to go away, the only difference these days is global communication means hackirs have a more global playing field.

MJ12

Elsewhere wrote: »

I remember getting access to the file that held details of all the employee salaries where I worked at the time!!!

Was that file writable? :cool:

zarf2007

thanks for all of the responses.

I can't help thinking that the people caught doing this should be put to some kind of use instead of being punished conventionally. I mean everyone knows that china/russia is heavily involved in stealing state secrets/industrial espionage using hackers, what if hackers we caught were turned into some kind of electronic 'home guard' to protect our systems?

If I were a hacker I would take that over doing prison time anyday....

Theres also the moral issue around hacking, take for example the 15 year old arrested for the talktalk hack. Is the crime that he was able to access peoples personal info or the fact that the company put profit over protecting their customer data?

I appreciate that no system can be 100% secure but the fact that the data was partially or totally unencrypted just smacks of amateurism.

On the other hand we don't thank a thief for letting us know we left the window open when he steals our valuables....

thorsoak

Have you not heard the term "poachers make the best gamekeepers"?

DomRavioli

BucksLady wrote: »

I'm not much older than you, and to be honest I wouldn't know where to start. As for most young people having 'hacked' at some point in time - find that a really odd statement and quite worrying if it were true.

That's surprising. A guy I dated when I was 17 was given the choice of prison or work for the MOD. He chose the MOD, and eventually moved on to working in detecting cyber crime. A lot of people I know of around my age know how to hack, and have messed about once upon a time, but we don't do it nowadays, but there are a lot of sites and companies that don't take security seriously.

I used to hack into the school computers literally daily because I wanted access to my email (the school didn't want us checking emails), and it took literally 10 seconds. This was 18 years ago, and standards have moved on somewhat since then, but you'd be surprised at the ease of doing it.

Tropez

zarf2007 wrote: »

thanks for all of the responses.

I can't help thinking that the people caught doing this should be put to some kind of use instead of being punished conventionally. I mean everyone knows that china/russia is heavily involved in stealing state secrets/industrial espionage using hackers, what if hackers we caught were turned into some kind of electronic 'home guard' to protect our systems?

They most likely already are. Just as casinos employ ex-cheats, the police employ ex-cons as consultants, we in private security employ ex-whatever we need for particular jobs etc.

The government and security services aren't going to tell the public what they're doing with these individuals though, the same way we don't tell our clients where some of our information comes from.

TalkTalk was a major, highly-publicised breach. It was important that any arrest related to that breach was also highly publicised. What happens once the perpetrator(s) have been prosecuted is something else. In this case, depending on whether the ISIS link is legitimate or not will likely determine whether an opportunity to make amends is given to this kid. Whether the kid takes any opportunities or not is another matter.

Theres also the moral issue around hacking, take for example the 15 year old arrested for the talktalk hack. Is the crime that he was able to access peoples personal info or the fact that the company put profit over protecting their customer data?

Both, most likely. Although the degree to which TalkTalk failed to reasonably protect data will have to be decided by independent investigators. If it is true though that they fell victim to an SQL injection following the DDOS attack, it does suggest pretty poor security and they'll probably be hit with severe fines and possible legal action.

Elsewhere

MJ12 wrote: »

Was that file writable? :cool:

I backed away fast and destroyed the output - I didn't want to get caught looking at it!

nb. It was before monitors - we interacted with the computer via teletype machines, like this

Spendless

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

While there is certainly a problem with politicians not understanding the technology they are legislating about, which makes for very bad law - just listen to debates in both houses concerning the Internet and you will wince if you understand it at low level at how badly informed the lawmakers are - being bored at school is no excuse for lawbreaking.

That said, I completely sympathise with this (americanisms aside) :


I had teachers tell me I was cheating because I didn't show my working, so I must have copied someone else. They seemed unable to accept that the problem could be solved by inspection, that is by looking at it I could see the answer or at most do a bit of mental arithmetic to get there. I could. The other thirty in the class couldn't (and this was a grammar school, not a comp or secondary modern), but I could. And I ended up with some terrible grades on my report card, for getting everything right.

Eventually those teachers worked out that rather than cheating I was actually the best in their respective classes at their subjects, but it took about six months. And yes it does increase the alienation and demoralisation that a really bright student will feel if even the teacher doesn't recognise it and marks them down because they are too good at the subject for their year. Still no excuse though.

So true. The other week DD's school music teacher accused her of copying and pasting answers. The truth is she attends 2-3 performing arts classes per week at an out of school drama group. She is taught things and asks things of the singing (and drama) teachers there, that haven't been covered yet on the National Curriculum or aren't going to be.

My own 15yo computer nerd however wants to know how the child in question didn't know how to cover his tracks more efficiently! As well as asking me several times what the reason would be that TalkTalk didn't have better security. My answer though I don't actually know is that it was down to a mixture of laziness and cost (not getting round to and not wanting to spend the money on making a system more secure).