One in four UK schoolkids admits hacking One in four UK youngsters have tried hacking into Facebook or webmail accounts, according to a new survey. An online poll of 1,000 school-age children in London and 150 in Cumbria discovered that the vast majority (78 per cent) knew that hacking was wrong. Despite this a substantial minority couldn't help themselves from …
I remember back in highschool my friend was telling me about MSN messenger, for some reason he thought I didn't understand the concept of a username and password. He helpfully explained "You'll need to set a password, for example my password is xyz" I went home and used the genuine password he had given me to lock him out of his account.
I gave it back shortly afterwards, but I don't think he's ever felt quite that stupid since.
Then again, we did manage to lock a teacher out of a VAX at college.
Did the old classic keyboard watch over his shoulder and got his password.
Logged in as him, wandered about the system for a bit, found it was all crap and boring, changed his password, logged out.
No idea how we kept straight faces, but we did as he sat there trying to log on, again and again and again... Eventually he had to call the head of dept to reset it.
Oh those were the days.
now hacking is now beig described as "guessing the users password"
kids are mean little effers who mostly do this for kicks as it says ... there is no 'hacking' involved, it's simple guesswork
can't wait to hear about the first case of some 12 year old who has had his/her password guessed and has chosen to prosecute the villain !
Don't people who call these elite hackers script kiddies normally get smacked up bad in the digital sense. Thier fragile little egos really are quite pathetic.
I wonder about most of the commentards here today...are they upset because their title is being abused (and they are 1337 h4xxxx0rz), or are they upset because THEY were never called hackers?
A/C just in case one of you is one of these fragile little 'kers
Propagating false information, no less. Whatever happened to fact checking?
Good God! It's bad enough the term "hacker" has been coopted by the bad guys, who should actually be known as "crackers", probably derived from "safe cracker".
Setting that aside, guessing a password is NOT HACKING. Jeez.
Hacking (in current usage) is creating programs tha do bad things.
Guessing passwords is more akin to tresspass. It takes no programming at all--in fact it doesn't involve anything more than using a computer the way it was intended to be used!
So your headline should actually be "1 in 4 UK students admit to trying to snoop on others accounts". But that doesn't have the magic word "hacking", does it?
I expect better of you. Try not to make a habit of such shoddy reporting. If I want this kind of story, I'd read the Sun.
"It's bad enough the term "hacker" has been coopted by the bad guys,"
It wasn't, it was 'co opted' by the media. How old are you ? Twelve ?
"Hacking (in current usage) is creating programs tha do bad things."
In your opinion, which is probably only locally correct. See for instance the popular web site "Hack a day", which is largely focussed on hacks that don't involve "programs that do bad things". But this argument is older than the internet, and I'm bored to death of it.
"Guessing passwords is more akin to tresspass"
No, actually, it is more akin to a criminal offence under Section 1 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990, viz :
"1) A person is guilty of an offence if—
(a) he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer;
(b) the access he intends to secure is unauthorised; and
(c) he knows at the time when he causes the computer to perform the function that that is the case."
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1990/ukpga_19900018_en_1#pb1-l1g1
You can see where it very specifically doesn't say anything about trespass.
"I was told cracking is legitimate hacking :D.."
Oh good god, it's bad enough that the seeping wound of the hacker definition argument has been opened, for the love of pete, please don't drag us down the white hat/black hat flame war route as well, the Fail Icon will never withstand the pounding :-)
Words mean whatever you mean them to mean, the only sad thing these days is that people insist on defining words in dictionaries so that language stops growing and developing, we have to invent new words like "chav" just to get by (someone actualy said "lol" as a word in a conversation the other day), most Atheists (who call themselves such) wouldn't say that gods don't exist, more likely that gods almost certainly (or probably) don't exist, but very few dictionaries will reflect this defintion (and instead, would call them agnostics by definition) the question is who is right, society or the dictionary? (queue the regular "decimated" definition argument).
If you're irish and call someone a "cute whore", you mean that they are a cunning person (possibly for selfish reasons), put that into google and you're more likely to get a flood of porn sites, so who is right? society (if google hits count) or the person who used the phrase?
Look up a certain popular four letter c word often used as a "the worst insult possible" (although I am a fan) and it has meant many things over the years but now those bastards who put it in black and white tell us what it means.
"Atheists (who call themselves such) wouldn't say that gods don't exist"
I doubt you would find Richard Dawkins being so moderate.
Atheists believe in "no gods", not "probably no gods".
People with a more moderate / scientific position call themselves agnostics, in a tradition almost as old as the scientific method. This is why the word agnostic was coined, FFS, so that people who reject atheism as a non-empirical belief can still have a word for their point of view.
That's my understanding, anyway. The redefinition of atheism as equivalent to agnosticism is a new one on me. Why have two words then?
It's very rude to deliberately mis-quote somebody when it fits your needs, I said "most Atheists (who call themselves such) wouldn't say that gods don't exist", note I said "most" indicating that (in my personal experience) "most" Atheists hold this view, in fact I have never met an Atheist that said that they "know that gods do not exist".
Atheists do not believe in any gods, probably because in all liklyhood no gods exist.
An agnostic however is the worst kind of fence-sitter, one who gives up their right to an opinion.
>>I doubt you would find Richard Dawkins being so moderate.
Dawkins defined belief on a 1 to 7 scale, 1 being "I know for a fact gods exist" and 7 being "I know for a fact gods do not exist", 4 is "perfect agnosticism" where the existence of gods is 50/50, Dawkins defined himself as 6.9, so I guess you would find Dawkins being so moderate.
Oh and just to add more fail to your plate, aspects of the "Scientific Method" can be tracked back to Babylonian times and beyond, thousands of years whereas "Agnostic" is a word made up by Thomas Huxley around 1889.
My guess is that peope who call themselves agnostics are Atheists but just scared to call themselves Atheists just in case they are wrong and burn in eternal hellfire, but here's a an idea for you, if gods do exists they know you're just trying to cheat and you'll burn anyway, stop being a coward and have the courage of your convictions, it's much better not to live your life in fear.
All this is an aside, the point is one of language, if the dictionary defintion of an Atheist is one who knows there are no gods then they would be a very small group, and certainly not representitive of most people who call themselves an Atheist.
Look, I'm not arguing law, which has no rationality behind it (only what an opportunist can convince idiot lawmakers of), I'm arguing fact. Trespass is entry where you aren't permitted to be. Guess what guessing another person's password does? :)
As for who co-opted what, why do bad guys refer to themselves as hackers? Although the media certainly didn't help the situation.
And given the word's origin, it means exactly what I said it means. Anything else isn't hacking, it's either fraud or trespass. A hack was originally an elegant piece of code, now it's a piece of code with evil intent.
"Look, I'm not arguing law, which has no rationality behind it (only what an opportunist can convince idiot lawmakers of), I'm arguing fact. Trespass is entry where you aren't permitted to be. Guess what guessing another person's password does? :)"
Violates S1 of CMA1990. I don't need to guess because it's written down and everything.
"Anything else isn't hacking, it's either fraud or trespass"
See above. And when you use the term Trespass, you are indeed arguing law, since it has a very specific legal meaning (actually a set of them, depending on what it's being applied to, speaking of which ... )
"And given the word's origin, it means exactly what I said it means. Anything else isn't hacking, it's either fraud or trespass. A hack was originally an elegant piece of code, now it's a piece of code with evil intent."
You appear to lack a clue as the etymology of the word, which I promised myself I wouldn't get into, but never mind, in fact it originally meant a prank and still means many things other than "piece of code", with or without evil intent, but that's all you're getting.
However, let us agree to disagree since, as Caroll's Humpty Dumpty aptly quoth : "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less"
There's no point in trying to defend the hacker definition any more, rather than meaning "Someone who likes to mess around with electronic equipment" it is now a catch all term for "Someone using a computer in a way that isn't approved by Microsoft/Government/Police/Workplace".
The worst part is that if you point out a security flaw, you are more than likely going to be labelled as a 'hacker' and be punished for it!
Said Mr Rozzer, Children need to understand that Pranks and Japes is a crime so serious that you can be extradited to the US without sight of evidence, and go to jail for a gazillion years.
You can detained without trial while we search your computer, and if we find a dirty picture we don't like, you can be imprisoned and be put on a register which will stop you getting a job for the rest of your life.
So kids, DO NOT COMMIT PRANKS AND JAPES!
And don't get me started on scrumping.... or GRAND THEFT BRAMLEY, as I like to call it.
Yours,
Mr Unbalanced Rozzer
. . . but then we all know that. It's not even cracking. It IS social engineering, of a sort.
Back in the day, when I were a lad, I remembering cracking at school, altering code on the school system - nothing special, just made it report that i'd written all the fancy maths programmes that were used and altered the odd equation here and there to give the wrong answer.
Once I left school, I moved on to hacking proper - spoofing the old Unix routers, bypassing security on websites etc etc. This all stopped when it became a world of script kiddies intent on causing havoc - myself and my cohorts were only ever interested in seeing what we could make the internet servers do that they weren't meant to.
What you do in the privacy of your home with your equipment and your wires and your data and your websites is your business.
Universities often have facilities for hackers to practice their skills...doing it in public is like pissing in someones private swimming pool because you can and is therefore wrong.
If what you call "social engineering" keeps prepubecent teenagers out of my inbox (and dismal mid twenties/early thirties vouyers), all the better!
"This all stopped when it became a world of script kiddies intent on causing havoc - myself and my cohorts were only ever interested in seeing what we could make the internet servers do that they weren't meant to."
Oh puke. Really ? you just played the "curiosity is not a crime" card ? GTFO.
I was fixing my next-door neighbour's daughter's laptop the other week. I booted it up and was faced with a password. I tried a blank password which didn't work, but then Windows gave me a hint. With that hint I guessed it in one try.
Guess that makes me a l33t hax0r too.
In my day, kids engaged in totally legal play. We had wholesome games like "plundering apples", "lifting stuff from Woolies", "running on the railway tracks", "crawling under the security fence", "building-site hide-and-seek". Some of my favourite toys were obtained in the course of that last one.
Kids today just don't have the same respect for the law.
... would never admit to doing it. So have we just been told that 1 in 4 school kids is a liar?
@ Blackworx I did the same thing on my 48k when I was 12. I hacked into a bank & gave myself an account with a million pounds, but I was to scared to try & with draw the money... well that's what I told my idiot mates at the time & they believed me.
@ Valerion you forgot to add UBER to the start lol
At Uni, we used to have a game of see who could get root on the Uni systems the fastest. We never broke things, and in fact policed it far better than the overworked sysadmin (one year we found a remote attacker who was making naughty changes, and passed on the 'good news').
Really, that time taught me more about general security than all the 'briefings' an training since; it teaches you ways of thinking to apply to your own systems to protect them, which is a great thing.
These days, if I got up to that, no doubt I'd be kicked off campus and the course, and probably fed to the authorities to be fined and locked up for a few years, never allowed to touch a keyboard again as a "threat to society".
In the early days of the 'net, I used to play around, and if I found something awry, send a polite message to their admins with patch recommendations. More than one would leave a polite "thank you" note in a public area; not enough to state what'd been done, but enough for those who knew to appreciate the thanks.
Again, these days, it'd be up in front of the beak first thing, and in the slammer in no time (maybe extradited as a terrorist).
It does get me down at times, looking at the contrast of the way things used to work, and the rank stupidity and fear I see now. And the lawyers keep telling us that the emperor's new clothes are indeed most fashionable.
"It does get me down at times, looking at the contrast of the way things used to work, and the rank stupidity and fear I see now."
Yeah, you're right, prosecuting people for breaking the law is, like, really lame.
And that's two "curiosity is not a crime"s and counting. Place your bets.
Heh, as a l33t d00d from the lake district, i can attest that there's bugger all else to do in cumbria at the age of 13, other than snatch the old lady's gin and sit in a park/field/forest.
Though i doubt any kids these days even know the ' or '1'='1'-- trick. Not that it helps when hacking your mates facebook page, better off phishing for that sort of thing really.
Cracking is not hacking, silly.
Anyway. College - VT100 terminals, mainframe logon screen and everything logged
My only option was to write something that looked like the logon screen and walk away.
eejot tries logging on on my dumb screen
username and password written to file in my account
screen sends obviously wrong password to proper logon mechanism whilst logging out
Proper system says 'wrong password please try again'
eejot tries again and gets in
I got their username and password account
this was in 1985. nothing new here
This post has been deleted by its author
"No, actually, it is more akin to a criminal offence under Section 1 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990, viz :
"1) A person is guilty of an offence if—
(a) he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer;
(b) the access he intends to secure is unauthorised; and
(c) he knows at the time when he causes the computer to perform the function that that is the case."
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1990/ukpga_19900018_en_1#pb1-l1g1
"
But surely possession of the password indicates you _are_ authorised - by definition.
I would hack into my classmates accounts and nick their coursework, then delete their copy and leave pron in their user area.
Me and my mates also had several teachers login details which was a lot of fun. We also used to play doom and duke nukem 3d in IT classes, with (the same) 5 PCs rebooting at the same time when the teacher came back.....good days.
I ended up being banned from all IT (including the IT class) for the last year and a half of my GCSEs....
Children smoking is illegal. Drunk tweenies is illegal. Girls popping out babies before or around their 16th implies something illegal took place. Driving too fast in a town is illegal.
Contrite crap like that is pointlessly stating the obvious. Those who know, know, and those who don't are probably having too much fun to care...
[back in my day, Econet was dead easy to hack, mobile phones were unheard of, and telephone charges for BBsing would incur incontinence in all but the well-paid... but, dammit, we understood the function of a computer inside out, none of this "black-box-it's-complicated" nonsense!]
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