By George Norman - Software News Editor
Added on 30 Oct 2008(684 Views)
This one is for all the teenage wannabe hackers that the media is going frenzy about. If you are young, dumb and full of com…petitive spirit, then I suggest you get into extreme sports, MMO games or any other activity that is on the right side of the law. By all means you should not use your programming skills to hack into other people’s computers and then go brag about it on some online forum.

According to Chris Boyd from FaceTime, company that specializes in providing online security solutions, the age of people related to hacking activities has dropped significantly. Children as young as 11 or 12 are freely sharing credit card details online and enquiring about hack tools, and all of this just for the fun of it. I guess that there is indeed a similarity between breaking the defenses of an enemy in an online game and breaking into someone’s PC (with one difference – the latter could land you some downtime in jail). Get that through your level 12 skull helmet, junior!


The thing that blows me away is the manner in which these kids get caught. Most of the times they are clueless as how to properly use a hack tool or phishing tool, but the one time they get it right, they go online and they brag about it. They make a video of their great hacking exploits and then post it on the internet for everyone to see. Haven’t we seen enough of this? People doing stupid and illegal things and then posting a video documentary of it on the net?

If you really have some hacking skills and insist on using them, then do so in a legit manner: start collaborating with a security company. Kevin Mitnick is truly one of the great hackers – he hacked into Sun Microsystems, Fujitsu Siemens, Nokia and Motorola. His shadowy, hacker life inevitably landed him a 5 years jail sentence. Do you know what he does now? He has switched sides and is working as a security consultant – he is still hacking, still using that big brain of his to access corporate networks, but he does so legally (not to mention that he gets paid tons of money for it).





Don't forget to:

RSS


Tags: Hacking, FaceTime Security

Link to this article:


Comments

D-man - 30 Oct 2008 20:35
loved his book The Art of Deception

Add comment:
Name(Required)
Email(Required - Never shown)
Website(Optional)
Comment(Required):

Insert the following code:
Software News
Chromium OS Goes Open-Source
This summer Google let the world know that it is working on a new operating system meant for the user that spends most of his time online. The operating system – aptly named Chrome OS because it is a natural extension...
20 Nov 2009
Office 2010 Beta Downloads Available to the Public
Earlier this week Redmond-based software giant Microsoft announced that Office 2010 became available for download as a Beta. The catch was that only ...
20 Nov 2009
Mozilla Releases: Firefox 3.6 Beta 3
The development process of the Firefox 3.6 browser is moving along rapidly. The first Beta version was released at the start of the month; Beta 2 was released about two weeks after Beta 1. About a week has passed since...
20 Nov 2009
New Labs Feature for Gmail: Green Robot!
The software developers at Google have announced the release of a new Gmail Labs offering called Green Robot! This new offering is meant to improve the Gmail Chat user experience by letting the ...
20 Nov 2009
Opera Mobile 10 Beta for Windows Mobile Is Out Also
Opera Software, the company that we all know for making the innovative and feature rich Opera web browser, has released Opera Mobile 10 Beta for Windows Mobile-powered devices. This release follows in the...
19 Nov 2009
Beta Testing is Over, Stable Version of Trillian for iPhone Released
The focus so far has been on desktop version of this multiprotocol instant messaging software application, Trillian Astra (version 4.1). Today is time to switch focus away from the desktop version and onto something a bit more...
19 Nov 2009
Recommended Tools

Top Downloads