UK's Top Police Warn That Modding Games May Turn Kids into Hackers (vice.com) 154
Joseph Cox, writing for Motherboard: Last week at EGX, the UK's biggest games event, attendees got a chance to play upcoming blockbusters like Battlefield 1, FIFA 17, and Gears of War 4. But budding gamers may also have spotted a slightly more unusual sight: a booth run by the National Crime Agency (NCA), the UK's leading law enforcement agency. Over the last few years, the NCA has attempted to reach out to technologically savvy young people in different ways. EGX was the first time it's pitched up to a gaming convention; the NCA said it wanted to educate young people with an interest in computers and suggested that those who mod online games in order to cheat may eventually progress to using low level cybercrime services like DDoS-for-hire and could use steering in the right direction. "The games industry can help us reach young people and educate them on lawful use of cyber skills," Richard Jones, head of the NCA's National Cyber Crime Unit's 'Prevent' team, told Motherboard in an email. "Through attendance at EGX and various other activities, we are seeking to promote ethical hacking or penetration testing, as well as other lawful uses of an interest in computers to young people," Jones said.
Valuable skills (Score:5, Insightful)
So why aren't they teaching game modding in high school?
Re:Valuable skills (Score:4, Interesting)
Because in the UK computer "education" runs to using outlook, word and access.
Anyone with an aptitude for programming is to be discouraged.
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Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The Acorn BBC computer was one of the best machines of its era, with one of the very few decent(*) built-in BASIC interpreters available then. For learning the principles of computing and clean structured programming it was an excellent computer.
Learning is more about understanding how and why things work, rather than just a set of skills. How popular it was worldwide, is not important at all. The UK(**) was at the forefront of teaching programming in the early 1980s with good classes on BBC-TV.
(*) procedur
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Technically speaking modding a game is not programming. It is just changing a script file, that the original producers of the game, provide with the game to promote and allow modding as well as adding new art, 3d models, music, pictures et al. Obviously this press release was put out by some anal up tight non-gamer who has no idea what so ever about what game modding is and in a confused bumbling Inspector Clouseau state confabulated modding games with hacking games. Where game hackers sell cheats to psych
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Re:Valuable skills (Score:5, Insightful)
Learning tech skills and becoming a "hacker" doesn't seem negative at all to me until it's coupled with "low level cybercrime." I think a better summary of this "study" is:
Cheaters may later become law breakers.
Re:Valuable skills (Score:5, Insightful)
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'low level' is the problem. I've always thought getting busted for a petty crime would be particularly embarrassing.
I was a good kid, I never got caught doing anything.
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It's just a repackaging of the old suits vs scruffies argument. Suits follow the rules, program by the book and never ask "I wonder how that actually works". Scruffies ask annoying questions, break things to find out how they work and dare to think outside the lines.
In the real world you need both (and to be a bit of both).
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So why aren't they teaching game modding in high school?
Because students are already learning modding in elementary school. I work in an after school program in San Jose, California, that teaches 5th and 6th graders how to write Minecraft mods in Python. They kids love it, and I certainly hope it gives them some of the basic skills that a hacker should have.
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GCHQ wants languages and to shape education to ensure a good career.
GCHQ staff teach 'future spies' in schools (9 March 2011)
http://www.bbc.com/news/educat... [bbc.com]
Long term the view is to get the tech sector back to the pre Snowden days of weak crypto and effortless gov/mil/private sector sharing.
GCHQ boss: Tech firms should co-operate over encryption (7 March 2016)
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-357... [bbc.com]
That will have to start with more charm and
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i mean
i think they dont really get this things about hacking and have a very hollywood idea about it, never heard of a red or
In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
bad education is turning our cops into blathering idiots.
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uninformed opinions is turning our cops into blathering idiots.
FTFY
Re: In other news (Score:3)
Re: In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
Uniformed opinions?
Not all opinions are based on facts. Donald Trump is a perfect example of that.
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Uninformed opinions are turning our cops into blathering idiots.
FTFY
FTFTFY.
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Almost, the education system fails everyone, and the kids turn to video games.
Some of them figure out how to mod the games and then turn into t3h 3vi1 h4x0rz later in life.
The others, who couldn't figure out how to download and install cheat mods start to yell "H4xor! BAN HAMMER!" and later become cops. When said cops still don't receive the respect from society which they feel they deserve, they start to shoot minorities during traffic stops while yelling "GUN!".
The solution? Who knows, but we'll try to
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Make the "hacking" part of the game, so the "cops" can "hack" too.
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bad education is turning our cops into blathering idiots.
No. Rejecting applicants because they're too smart is turning our police force into blathering idiots.
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Right now the police have incredible power. They can get a huge amount of data and your online habits, and if they get hold of your computer it's a boner-inducing goldmine for them.
If kids learn how to use VPNs and Tor, their pillaging will be curtailed. They might be able to make such things somewhat illegal, but that won't stop people.
Their best option is to keep people dumb or brainwashed into trusting them.
clickbait article from Vice (Score:2, Insightful)
Just another clickbait article from Vice, nothing to see here, move along.
I swear, there's no other journalist these days that writes more half-baked articles than Joseph Cox.
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I miss Vice looking for whorehouses in Liberia and N Korea. They were cool back then.
Clickbait? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds really clickbaitey.
"Modding Games May Turn Kids into Hackers" is a very different statement than "those who mod online games in order to cheat may eventually progress to using low level cybercrime services like DDoS-for-hire".
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I agree, I clicked the link expecting a game about wearing green parkas and riding around on a Lambretta scooter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Sadly, you find a lot of players online who think modding is cheating. They're so tied up into competitive gaming that they fail to see any nuances, even accusing people on single player games of cheating.
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Mind you, many such games' devs have gone so far as to provide straightforward javascript hooks solely for the purpose o
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A really good example of this is how the Survival difficulty in Fallout 4 (a single-player game) got changed to disable SAVING other than when resting in a safe spot, and using any mods disables getting Steam achievements.
Unless, of course, you use another mod to re-enable the achievements. *eyeroll*
Hacking (Score:5, Funny)
Hacking, the new gateway drug...
Re:Hacking (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll leave this here:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
OMG (Score:1)
Other announcements from the Correlation does not imply causation department include:
Those who breathe may eventually progress becoming murderers.
Those seeking public office may eventually become corrupt.
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I dunno, if you actually read TFS, it says "People who modify code to CHEAT ONLINE may wind up modifying code to BREAK THE LAW".
People who cheat at online games are less likely to have an ethical code than those who don't? News at 11.
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People who cheat at online games are less likely to have an ethical code than those who don't? News at 11.
What's an ethical code?
I used to hack the muds I played. I gave myself privileges as a coder that the game admin didn't intend me to have. That meant I could do more, and actually led to me becoming admin on two muds because I'd learned how they worked under the covers in order to subvert them, and that made me skilled in maintaining them.
Is that unethical or exploratory? Unethical or naive? Unethical or innovative?
Is it still unethical if I never disadvantaged another player? Never used my illicit access t
Most parents (Score:2)
Most parents use those games to train their kids with good reflexes and hand-eye coordination.
Re: Most parents (Score:2)
Modding != Cheating/Hacking (Score:5, Informative)
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I hack games to cheat all the time - it's a great way to add some more utility to an old game.
If it's single player and I'm not bothering anyone else then I don't see how anyone else needs to be alarmed. I just find it funny to break the game and make it act outside its design parameters, and who doesn't like acting like a total jerk in GTA? I play the game to get *away* from reality. That's the point.
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I agree. And it's not (just) for the sake of cheating - sometimes, I wish to set up certain scenarios. Like in Civ IV, I'd want to set up certain civilizations w/ certain preset cities, scattered on some islands, before starting a game. So I'd go into the scenario editor, set it all up, save it and then start the game from that point. They got rid of the scenario editor in Civ V, replacing it w/ XML tables somewhere, but I'd like to see it return in Civ VI
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No, there are people who are loudly against changing online games. For Fallout 4 for instance, they defended the change so that modding disables achievements (apparently on some consoles you can get some monetary value from achievements), never mind that a mod was able to override this change. The fights that went on over this was amazing, some people just can not bear the thought that somewhere somebody is peaking at the cards in his solitaire deck never mind fixing bugs without permission.
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I agree that blocking achievements in Fallout 4 when mods are enabled is an over reaction. It is a single player game, and many of the mods add to the game, and don't give the player any kind of advantage. The article seems to conflate modding, which is an acceptable behavior in many cases, with cheating, which by definition is never acceptable when interacting with other people.
On the other hand, there are any number of highly competitive online games where hacking in order to cheat ruins the experience
Misleading Title (Score:5, Insightful)
Really should read "UK's Top Police Warn That Making Aim-Bots/Game Cheats May Turn Kids into Cyber Criminals"
I'm not an expert in sociology, but it seems plausible that unethical behavior in online video games can be a gateway to unethical online behavior in general. From a technical standpoint I know that the skills developed by hacking games are similar to the skills needed to hack financial software.
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People who tend to be creative/unethical are more likely to create cheats/mods in games as well as do other creative/unethical exploits as DDoS-for-hire. There's no evidence presented that modding games will /cause/ the other activity.
Re: Misleading Title (Score:2)
Learning how to beat the system doesn't always imply criminality.
Then perhaps you shouldn't have used an example that does. ;)
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HFT does not imply criminality.
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Which is in itself a failure of the legal system.
Headline does not match summary or TFA (Score:3)
“We have undertaken analysis on pathways into cyber crime offending and can conclude that some young people who have an interest in online games may begin to participate in gaming cheat websites and ‘modding',”
This is not what most gamers think when they read "modding." I could see how some script kiddies might get their start trying to cheat at online games.
Shocking! (Score:3)
In similar news, parents who are complete pricks do run the risk that their children grow up to be policemen.
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Or politicians
*facepalm* (Score:2)
Just.... *facepalm*
How do you even begin to argue something so breathtakingly incorrect and ignorant that it's not even wrong?
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The question we must ask ourselves [youtube.com].
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Quote Wolfang Pauli.... "This isn't right. It isn't even wrong"
Not even read? Obviously true (Score:3)
To me it seems obvious that it's true. Let's take a closer look a the claim and perhaps I can better understand your thoughts on the matter. The claim is:
> "some young people" ... who mod online games in order to cheat may eventually progress to using low level cybercrime services and could use steering in the right direction
Let's break that down and you can tell me which part you disagree with:
A) some young people mod online games in order to cheat
B) may eventually progress to using low level cybercri
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Would you say it's false that some young people who hack games in order to cheat may later apply similar skills to "cheat" the law, to be involved in "low level cybercrime"?
I say false, yes. The people I knew in high school and college who hacked games in order to cheat were the type who were already petty criminals to begin with. Chiseling little weasels that shoplifted and vandalized for fun and profit. Cheating in games came later, when they discovered they could troll people by doing it. I fully expected them to be cybercriminals (stupid word though it is), but it wasn't the cheating in games that led to it. It was their life-long habits.
They said correlation, not cause, and you agree (Score:2)
> I fully expected them to be cybercriminals (stupid word though it is), but it wasn't the cheating in games that led to it. It was their life-long habits.
So you agree that the correlation is likely. Nobody claimed that one caused the other.
Aside from "Chiseling little weasels that shoplifted and vandalized for fun", there are also people who like to hack, to install Linux on their phone or DVR, to turn our Linksys router into a media server or VPN concentrator, etc. Some of us like to not only think o
Think of the children! (Score:5, Funny)
This may kinda, possibly, lead to kids who might at some point think of being a script kiddie. We have also found a correlation between these modders and drinking Mountain Dew. We're drawing up new legislation as we speak.
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Dew is a gateway drug, it leads to Max, which leads to strong coffee.
Every person that owns a french press, with an attached IV tube, started out with soft drinks.
Is it just me (Score:3)
We should shut down all the engineering schools (Score:1)
Knowing how to make things will inevitably lead people to a life of crime. Best to nip it in the bud.
think of the children (Score:2)
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I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The saddest realization of my adult life was when I had the epiphany that the United States I thought I'd grown up in never really ever existed in the first place. It maybe existed for a few years following 1776, but after that it already started getting subverted into something else, once people like the Bush family of traitors, as an example, started twisting it and gaming it into what they wanted it to be, not what the Founding Fathers envisioned. All we have today is the shell of it, and some old piece
Break free of the essential contraints of the Cons (Score:2)
> started getting subverted into something else, once people ... started twisting it and gaming it into what they wanted it to be
Some of the things presidents have said out-loud, publicly, are kind of shocking if you understand what's actually written in the Constitution. For example:
---
the Warren Court, it wasnâ(TM)t that radical. It didnâ(TM)t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution
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A president thinks the government needs to "b
glass mobility (Score:2)
s/warn/brag/
s/Hackers/contributing members of society/
s/lowlife/1%/
s/iocane/iocane/
This may be somewhat accurate .... (Score:5, Interesting)
One of our pre-teens is an avid gamer, and lately, we've noticed she started complaining about getting banned from online games she plays. When we looked into it more closely, we found out most of it was for attempts at hacking. Even in Pokemon Go, she had two accounts set up .... one "regular" one, and the other she was using to hack.
She definitely exhibits the interest in manipulating software to get the results she wants, and despite our lectures about why cheating is bad, etc. -- it seems to increasingly fall on deaf ears.
Now, would I say all of this means she's headed down the road of becoming a cyber-criminal? Not exactly .... In daily life, she abides by most of the rules. She's not the type to try to steal something from a store, for example. She generally knows right from wrong. But I think when it comes to games where everything is virtual, she has a feeling, deep-down, that it's more "ok" to cheat and hack. And in 1 or 2 cases where I thought she was "permanently banned" from a game, she got her accounts back again. I'd say it's quite likely that required a bit of bending the truth to an admin somewhere, to make that happen.
So all I guess I'm saying is, there's probably kind of a mushy grey-area here. Once you start taking an interest in dishonest play in a computer game and experience the thrill of successfully beating the system to do it -- you're exhibiting the same characteristics the common criminal does (enjoys the challenge of outsmarting the system for personal gain). I think many will draw a line in the sand, deciding that for example, "copying a copyrighted piece of music is acceptable" (because you didn't actually deprive anyone else of their copy by doing it) and "cheating in games is acceptable" because they're just entertainment anyway and nobody's really getting hurt. But you have a sense of morals/ethics that says you'd stop at something that was actually emptying another person's bank account or taking tangible goods without compensating someone for them. Others won't, especially if nobody really tried to teach them right and wrong....
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Once you start taking an interest in dishonest play in a computer game and experience the thrill of successfully beating the system to do it -- you're exhibiting the same characteristics the common criminal does (enjoys the challenge of outsmarting the system for personal gain).
I would argue that those are the characteristics of any successful businessman.
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Once you start taking an interest in dishonest play in a computer game and experience the thrill of successfully beating the system to do it -- you're exhibiting the same characteristics the common criminal does (enjoys the challenge of outsmarting the system for personal gain).
I would argue that those are the characteristics of any successful businessman.
To put a finer point on it, I would say that the behavior of cheating and continuing to cheat due to laughable "punishment" is more akin to banking executives, as recently demonstrated by Wells Fargo getting slapped on the wrist.
Re:This may be somewhat accurate .... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, would I say all of this means she's headed down the road of becoming a cyber-criminal? Not exactly .... In daily life, she abides by most of the rules. She's not the type to try to steal something from a store, for example. She generally knows right from wrong. But I think when it comes to games where everything is virtual, she has a feeling, deep-down, that it's more "ok" to cheat and hack
Her instincts and morals are good and are like most technical people, they can tell the difference between virtual and non-virtual, the true harm (if any) and consequences are understood. Hacking games never harmed anyone and should never carry severe consequences, at most you don't get to play that game anymore or have to pay for a new account, yes it's ethically wrong within the context of a game... but that's the point it's just a game, when someone cheats at monopoly they don't go to jail or get extortionate and real fines... people just don't play with them.
Of course we know hacking can have serious consequences, if it's connected to something real and dangerous, but when you hack that stuff you will know it... the problem is outsiders who can't tell the difference, it's black and white hacking === evil to them, the best we can do for those people is say hacking is a broad term: it's like "mechanic", a mechanic can fix cars and tinker with them, make them run in ways their manufacturer never intended because they have explored how these things work, but that's ok. Their knowledge also gives them the ability to modify cars in specific dangerous ways that to intentionally harm a driver... your mechanic at your local garage could do that...
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love the mechanic angle! /hat tip
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Hacking games never harmed anyone
In the same way that cheating at a race by using an electric bicycle never harmed anyone.
"Marijuana is a gateway drug" (Score:3, Insightful)
Marijuana is a gateway drug to hardcore drug use and therefore should be outlawed
Remember that old line? Meanwhile the people claiming that were sipping their ethanol-laced beverages or taking a drag off their cigarettes. Modding video games isn't going to create cyber-criminals any more than smoking marijuana led people to become heroin addicts; the tendency to use hard-core drugs existed in the first place. Correlation is not causation. All discouraging kids from experimenting with code is going to do is discourage them from being creative. In fact getting all serious with them about this might actually become the cause of them being criminals, seeing as how contrary and rebellious teenagers, especially teenage boys, can become. Since when did telling someone "don't do such-and-such" actually deter them, anyway?
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Well... it kinda is, but only because it's illegal most places. If it's illegal and you try it and have a good experience you're more likely to try other illegal substances.
I doubt Marijuana's place as a gateway drug is anywhere near as placed in societies where it is now legal.
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I wasn't born with my contempt for the law. It's a million pointless and/or unenforced laws that grew it over time.
My life's ambition continues to be 'invent a new crime'....it will be made illegal after I do it. Harder than it sounds. Damn 'Computer Fraud and Abuse Act' makes anything a federal judge doesn't like illegal, after the fact. Ips post facto, shmipspostfacto.
I realize that getting some bendejo judge to make something illegal after the fact technically completes my life's ambition. There is
Amazing how crap like this coming up (Score:1)
Remember how the geniuses says playing computer games will make everyone enjoy killing? Now we have geniuses saying modding leads to hacking! Will this sort of crap ever stop?
In other news (Score:2)
People who are politicians, lawyers or work for advertising agencies are more likely to be douchebags and venal cork suckers...
Is your life in immediate danger, tune it at 11:00 to find out more...
The only acceptable technical skills... (Score:2)
Cops want to promote ethics? (Score:2)
That's very interesting [davros.org]
The police are right... (Score:2)
Learning to mod WILL no doubt increase the number of hackers. A small percent of those hackers may do malicious things with their hacking skill.
A greater number will learn how to improve existing software on hardware, or train hardware to do better and greater things Some will go into the maker movement, some will become programmers.
Yes, learning to mod may steer a minority of modders into doing bad things- and may steer a majority of modders INTO DOING GOOD THINGS.
My study shows 95% of bank robbers... (Score:4, Funny)
had bank accounts before they become bank robbers. Clearly we should make possession of a bank account an indicator of likelihood to rob banks.
Also, 95% of killers know how to drive, and 95% of people committing white collar crime went to college.
Imagine... (Score:3)
If modding games might turn kids into hackers, imagine what *writing* games and apps can do.
This explains a lot... (Score:2)
Now I know why so there are so many expat gamers from the UK in the US and various countries in the EU.
Obligatory (Score:2)
https://youtu.be/fIWKMgJs_Gs?list=PL5919C8DE6F720A2D&t=237
Random nerd issues warning; Becoming a police officer may lead to abuse of power and total douchebaggery.
Condescendingly stupid thing to say (Score:1)
It's like saying people who buy lots of tools to use in their shed, are more likely to go on to use them to murder someone, and then chop them up. More likely, people who have developed these skills, are likely to go on and find well paid and highly skilled employment, instead of following a life of crime. Crazy comments like this will also scare off potential recruits. One does wonder about the integrity of those employed by the security services, given their cooperation with the fascist Mega Stasi style m
Keep calm and remain ignorant (Score:2)
Shock, horror (Score:1)
people wth an interest in accounting or business and or politics may become criminals - well almost always in the latter two.
I see Adequacy is still making waves. (Score:3, Funny)
When men were real men. Women were real women and Trolls were real trolls!
Re: I see Adequacy is still making waves. (Score:2)
I blame opposable thumbs, the gateway appendage (Score:2)
Others (Score:2)
"Well, then there are those kids that start with modding and actually get a degree and come to work for us, to find the snot-nosed little...I mean growing modders who are becoming a problem. Clearly, the ones who are becoming fighters against the problem have no sway in the statistics that most are the problem."
And that's a good thing (Score:3)
Look up what a hacker actually is.
But no wonder, that police, government and so on fear people who can think and build things. Indepence and doing stuff yourself is dangerous! Let's consume only one devices which just allow netflix, but no pirated movies. Which track you via google/apple, but do not allow you to firewall it.
Do not mod your games, do not upgrade the pc yourself. Do not build cool stuff. Do not thing, do not question things.
Modders and cheaters are two different things (Score:2)
Cheaters in online-games have already failed as human beings, because the do not understand the value of things like personal integrity, honesty or respecting your fellow human beings. They will go on to have a criminal career or one that is legal, but does massive damage to society for a comparable small personal gain. Whether they learn to code exploits or not is immaterial, these people are a massive problem because of personality-defects.
Modders on the other hand are creative people that sometime create
You can drive? You might become a bank robber! (Score:2)
Good lord this is fear based propaganda. Good lord the English speaking world is being overrun by right wing fear mongers AGAIN.
Yes anyone that mods a game would have just SOME of the skills requisite to performing cyber crime. Those same skills would most likely be applied to just being blue/white collar wage earning paying taxes worrying about the mortgage in 15 years time.
The missing piece of this puzzle is simple morals. How about just teaching respect and morality to children. I dare say this will
UK's Top Police Warn That Modding Games May Turn K (Score:1)
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Kinda. Not really hacking, but programming. I was too cheap to be able to afford any games on my Sinclair Spectrum so I wrote my own. Then when I first moved to PC I did the same. Learnt programing- never meant or wanted to do it as a career but accidentally fell into it (because it's easy when you've been doing it since you were 5) and now it's my career.
Now I program for work and so I don't write games because the last thing I want to do when I get home is program some more. Killed my hobby, but it's
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The new idea is to have expert staff with the best skills found in what was the Government Technical Assistance Centre, National Technical Assistance Centre, Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch to help police in new roles but never show any raw or live data to any other police.
The data collection was perfect and never leaked but too man
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Hacking to cheat exposes the hacker far more to memory structures like the program stack, and to pointers.
The desire to run a DDoS for hire service has more in common with vigilante hacking.
I can see how there might be a little overlap, but I would expect copyright protection technology circumvention over ddosing as the natural product of that evolutionary path. knowing just where to poke to break the protection and play a game for free seems more plausible, given game hacking being the source.
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When I was a kid we had things rough...
I remember boot tracing Apple ][ games to crack the disk encryption. Copy the read boot sector code, mod to drop to monitor rather than running boot sector. Disassemble boot sector, mod read boot sector code to write jump to monitor instruction over 'start game' or 'start secondary loader' instruction. If 'secondary loader' repeat: (disassemble, and add more 'self' modifying code) until 'file system' is working. Copy files over serial port to another computer with u