Meet the Script Kiddies: Teenage hackers who make or break our world

euronews.com:

Script Kiddies - or Skiddies - is the term used by internet security professionals to describe young hackers who use ready-to-run programmes to attack computer networks.Although they don't have the skills of their more experienced counterparts, the ease with which they can launch attacks makes them a real threat to internet security."These kids that are hackers today, they really do in the truest sense, have the ability to make or break our world," says Alexander Urbelis, Cybersecurity Lawyer, Crowell & Moring LLP. "And we have to make absolutely sure that we are both nurturing them and nourishing them in the right way."One Skiddy explains, anonymously, how he got started: "My way of getting into hacking was very different from the normal way, which is experiment with cheats and then getting into hacking.

I was about 12 years old and basically what happened was that one day a friend online who I chatted with was like 'I found a really interesting little program and I want to try out'.

He put my telephone number into this account and he was able to take over my whole WhatsApp, I mean, completely take over my WhatsApp account.

He was able to write messages to all of my friends, say all this stupid stuff. It's a technique where you’re able to completely take over and control an account that's not yours.