What Should Society do With Young Hackers
Posted by: Timothy Weaver on 09/07/2015 05:44 AM
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Are young cyber hackers deserving of a second chance? Many in the security industry have mixed feeling about the topic.
Julius Kivimaki, a 17-year-old hacker found guilty of 50,700 "instances of aggravated computer break-ins," will spend no time in jail. Kivimaki - a.k.a. "Zeekill," "Ryan" –was sentenced to a two-year suspended prison sentence, confiscated his PC, and was ordered to forfeit €6,588 ($7,276) worth of property obtained through his crimes.
While initiatives such as the U.S. Cyber Challenge (USCC) seek to draw young IT enthusiasts into information security careers, the teenage temptation to show off or respond to a dare are seemingly inevitable.
A Silicon Valley cybersecurity scientist said: "Kids need to be able to screw up. They're under this enormous pressure to perform, in a society that sometimes seems like it's looking for ways to reject them.”
As a society, he adds, we really don't know how to deal with all the hacking that's going on. “Everybody's getting hit – and the only thing scarier than an expensive problem is a problem that no amount of money seems to solve. The kids sometimes get punished just because they're the few who you can actually catch.”
A prime example of the dangers kids face was brought out by the case of Aaron Swartz, the pioneering internet technologist who took his own life in 2013 at age 26 while facing trial on felony charges. Swartz was charged after being caught two years earlier downloading data from the JSTOR academic journal database at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His aim was to distribute the info for free. Swartz was trying to make a statement about privacy and the democratic sharing of information.
But focusing on deals and rehabilitation is smart. Irish cyberpsychology expert Grainne Kirwan has found that kids tend to naturally "age out" of cybercrime as they grow up and get responsibilities, such as the need to start supporting their own children. That fact highlights that youthful cybercrime transgressions are often just that - bad things people do when they're young.
Source: BankInfosecurity
Julius Kivimaki, a 17-year-old hacker found guilty of 50,700 "instances of aggravated computer break-ins," will spend no time in jail. Kivimaki - a.k.a. "Zeekill," "Ryan" –was sentenced to a two-year suspended prison sentence, confiscated his PC, and was ordered to forfeit €6,588 ($7,276) worth of property obtained through his crimes.While initiatives such as the U.S. Cyber Challenge (USCC) seek to draw young IT enthusiasts into information security careers, the teenage temptation to show off or respond to a dare are seemingly inevitable.
A Silicon Valley cybersecurity scientist said: "Kids need to be able to screw up. They're under this enormous pressure to perform, in a society that sometimes seems like it's looking for ways to reject them.”
As a society, he adds, we really don't know how to deal with all the hacking that's going on. “Everybody's getting hit – and the only thing scarier than an expensive problem is a problem that no amount of money seems to solve. The kids sometimes get punished just because they're the few who you can actually catch.”
A prime example of the dangers kids face was brought out by the case of Aaron Swartz, the pioneering internet technologist who took his own life in 2013 at age 26 while facing trial on felony charges. Swartz was charged after being caught two years earlier downloading data from the JSTOR academic journal database at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His aim was to distribute the info for free. Swartz was trying to make a statement about privacy and the democratic sharing of information.
But focusing on deals and rehabilitation is smart. Irish cyberpsychology expert Grainne Kirwan has found that kids tend to naturally "age out" of cybercrime as they grow up and get responsibilities, such as the need to start supporting their own children. That fact highlights that youthful cybercrime transgressions are often just that - bad things people do when they're young.
Source: BankInfosecurity
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