Contrary to what you believe, Teenage hackers are not motivated by money. They are only interested in idealism and impressing their mates. This is according to a study carried out by the National Crime Agency. The body reached this conclusion after interviewing teenagers and children who have been arrested or cautioned for computer-based crimes.
Taking a look at children between the ages of 12 and 17, it was discovered that although they were involved in hacking, these teenage hackers are very unlikely to be involved in theft, fraud or harassment.
Instead, they see hacking as a thing that morality calls for. In fact, Paul Hoare who is a senior manager at the Agency and the lead in the research stated that they see it as a “moral crusade” while for others, it is all about tackling technical problems and to prove themselves to friends. It’s all about impressing and proving a point.
According to Hoare who spoke on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, these young children are yet to fully understand the implications of these things on “business, government websites, and individuals.”
Now, the interesting take is that young hackers could actually profit from their such skills once they are able to stay clear of cybercrime, he said. He added thus
A lot of the skill sets these people have are hugely marketable. The world has a lack of cybersecurity and there are lucrative careers to be had, but [they] are much harder to come by if you already have a criminal conviction.
This could explain why most young hackers do not go about hacking bank accounts and other financial institutions. As an example, a member of an anonymous hacking group, Jake Davis, who was arrested when he was only 18, stated that he did not intend to make any financial benefits from it.
He insisted that although the internet still gives room for such idealism, it as well provides more opportunities to get involved in “ethical hacking”.
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He gave an example that Companies and governments love hiring hackers. What these hired hackers do in a system called bug bounties is to hack to prevent them being hacked. Companies will put out a message to say: ‘This is within scope, if you hack us responsibly, tell us about it, we will patch it up and then we will pay you.’
“The hackers will message the company saying: ‘I’ve found this bug in your system, here is what damage it can cause.’ If you take a company like Twitter they have paid over $800,000 [£625,000] to hackers over the last few years.”
Teenage hackers that do it for the money
That said, there are still some that do it for the money here are 5 in that class. For example, it has recently been reported that teens are now making thousands of pounds through a global hacking network that has been built around the game Fortnite.
According to the BBC, some of these hackers who may be as young as 14 are stealing private gaming accounts of others on the platform and then reselling them. The accounts stolen contain expensive skins that the real owners have probably spent hundreds of pounds and dollars to get.
