A 12-year-old boy in Montreal has pleaded guilty to breaking into multiple government and police websites in the name of the hacker collective Anonymous, reports the Toronto Sun. The attacks were not politically motivated, however; the boy testified that he traded information to members of Anonymous in exchange for videogames.. The boy admitted to hijacking websites for the Montreal police, the Quebec Institute of Public Health, and the Chilean government, among others. His attacks included flooding servers to bring down sites, defacing the text and appearance of sites, and accessing user information.. A 13-year-old in Toronto revealed that they had infiltrated various corporate networks for a hacking group, exchanging sensitive data for software credits.. Montreal Hacking Case,Cyber Crime,Website Defacement,Youth Hacking,Anonymous Group. . Dave Wreski
The first time Zach Mayo infiltrated a security program, he was barely in his teens. At home with his family's computer, he bristled at the parental control software cutting him off from the Internet after curfew.. "I'm 12 years old. Of course I'm going to try to break into it," Mayo said. "Then you realize you can." The breach didn't go unnoticed by his father. "He was mad at me because I broke in. I looked at him and said, 'This is what I want to do for the rest of my life,'" Mayo said. "But I want to help people." The link for this article located at Charlotte Observer is no longer available. . Zach Mayo shares his childhood intrigue with programming that influenced his path towards technology assistance. Delve into his story.. Ethical Hackers, Hacking Careers, Cybersecurity Stories, Youth Hacking, Good-Guy Hackers. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
Three young hackers under investigation for unlawfully accessing personal information on thousands of people in a LexisNexis database have characterized their act as a cyberjoyride that got out of hand. The hackers, ages 16, 19 and 20, spoke with Wired News by phone Monday and said that in January and February they accessed LexisNexis data -- which included the Social Security number, birth date, home address and driver's license number of numerous celebrities and hacker friends -- to claim bragging rights, rather than to steal identities or sell the information to identity thieves, as some published reports have stated. . "We didn't use the info for bad reasons," said the 16-year-old from Massachusetts, who goes by the handle "Cam0." "It was to have the info and get kicks out of it." The link for this article located at Wired News is no longer available. . Recent studies show young hackers breaching LexisNexis data with advanced methods, highlighting the pressing need for improved cybersecurity and ethical hacking education. LexisNexis Data Breach, Youth Hacking, Cybersecurity Threats. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
Get the latest Linux and open source security news straight to your inbox.