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View Full Version : Kids 'using coding skills to hack' friends on games!

karl
February 8th, 2013, 12:07 PM
Children as young as 11 years old are writing malicious computer code to hack accounts on gaming sites and social networks, experts have said.

A report from antivirus company AVG detailed evidence of programs written to "steal" virtual currency.

In one case, researchers were able to reverse-engineer "amateur" code to reveal data about the identity of one child in Canada.

The company said children must be educated on coding "rights and wrongs".

"As more schools are educating people for programming in this early stage, before they are adults and understand the impact of what they're doing, this will continue to grow." said Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer at AVG.


Full story here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21371609
Jess
February 8th, 2013, 12:29 PM
Wow as young as 11? Seriously? Who knew...
OrKing
February 8th, 2013, 02:44 PM
Those smart little bastards. Gotta say, I'm impressed.
Mynick
February 8th, 2013, 03:43 PM
They deserve some credite :P At least they code, not use some programme.
Human
February 9th, 2013, 01:33 PM
it's inevitable... but even for kids it isn't hard nowadays
CharlieHorse
February 9th, 2013, 01:54 PM
Those smart little bastards. Gotta say, I'm impressed.

Haha my reaction exactly! XD
Smeagol
February 9th, 2013, 02:20 PM
Well, it's not moral. But still, that takes smarts.
Sir Suomi
February 11th, 2013, 09:45 PM
Damn. Only 11 years old? I barely know how to copy and paste. :confused:
Castle of Glass
February 11th, 2013, 10:02 PM
11, too young. schools shouldn't teach programming only in high school.
isaiah1038
February 11th, 2013, 10:41 PM
Okay, I have been learning programming since I was 11, and I'm still not that good. Those kids are pretty impressive. (Plus I have only been doing HTML and JavaScript, but I plan on learning Java, C+, C++, and some other languages)

I say that this should be a lesson to social networking sites. They should HIRE these kids to try to hack into their system, so that they can improve security.
TheMatrix
February 13th, 2013, 02:20 AM
It's called script kiddies. Which is typically all that it is. There is somebody who has spent lots of time trying to crack the program(usually not a kid), and posts some sample code to an obscure forum. Some 11-year-old sees that, and says "oh thats cool" and uses it.

More often than not, this is a result of leaving too much debugging code in the game release. It can be removed with not too much effort, but game makers don't have the time, usually, to do that.