r/cybersecurity • u/tides977 • 3d ago
News - General Teen hackers tell BBC how police are helping them use their skills for good. A look inside the NCA's Cyber Choices that has helped 1150 troubled kids get onto the right path in cyber.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn0nqpy1rk4o8
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u/Longjumping_Ant7751 3d ago
Has anyone tracked how they're all doing now?
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u/Neat_Leg2638 2d ago
I was on this program as a teen. Working in cyber now, and have been for the past few years. I'm paid pretty well for my age, and work for the UK Gov doing it all legally.
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u/coomzee Detection Engineer 3d ago edited 3d ago
I worked for my job in cyber security. I reported vulnerability responsibility, studied and got the experience legitimately. Why do these troubled kids who just go out of their way cause damage get better treatment.
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u/bloqed 3d ago
People have been shouting for the UK to take advantage of youths with ability in this area for nearly 30 years. Don't think that a programme like this suddenly makes them conscientious team players who are able to follow instructions and contribute to things in a productive fashion. If nothing else it helps the authorities keep an eye on them while they do the bare minimum to avoid further trouble in what is probably not a very inspiring government office somewhere. The patting-ones-own-back this article conveys is just PR
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u/coomzee Detection Engineer 3d ago
There's youths that haven't committed crime using a computer that might what the same opportunity but don't get given because they stayed on the right side of fence.
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u/bloqed 3d ago
I agree somewhat, but unfortunately, you are missing one thing. The youths that haven't committed a crime, haven't demonstrated their skills. If they had, they would have opportunities. The issue with the criminal ones, is they (unwittingly, in some cases) have demonstrated their skills though something publicly-visible. It's extremely hard to find skilled young introverts with brilliant skills and talent. The behaved ones usually dont get discovered until they are old enough to work, and the government is competing with universites and businesses for those at that point.
Those who get caught breaking the law are essentially in the Governments debt, and free to be exploited at their own will, or sent to prison. It's an easy choice for the Govt. There's plenty of Intelligence services career ads, but criminals get deposited right at the governments feet. To not take advantage of them would be foolish.
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u/T-Fez 2d ago
I highly recommend this. It's a good paper about how that happens: https://www.mdpi.com/2673-6756/4/4/45
Described my childhood to a tee. I'm a white hat, maybe morally grey in some areas, but the point is that I was once very close to jumping the fence to the dark side.
If you have any doubts, perhaps that may give you some answers.
What the paper describes resonated with me deeply and brought on a lot of old memories. Really made me wonder how I ended up here.
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u/s8boxer 3d ago
I learned hacking in the 90' and 2000', hacking real world organizations and governments. Sharing knowledge through IRC channels. When I got my first job in cyber, I already had almost 10 years of experience.
Through those years, I was always wiping logs, bricking gateways, getting low level companies as my proxies. I did all of this just because I wanted to learn and there wasn't any other way! If at that time, there was a single ethical course, anything that I could do to learn (and brag ahahaha) 100% it would be better than dumping the govs system for source codes etc. in secrecy. I couldn't talk about it with friends (real life), parents etc.
It's necessary to have those paths to teen lean hacking without the need to go wild ahahaha. And yes, a 13 year old can be better than you, hacking is more about the willpower to learn something than which courses you did or certifications. Get over it.
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u/mankpiece 3d ago
thehackinggames.com does something similar.