Tuesday, May 19, 2009

20% of teenagers claim to have hacking tools

Well, according to the press, or something:
According to Panda Security, we should take seriously the statistic it gathered from a survey of over 4,000 15 to 18 year-olds that nearly one in five of them have the knowledge to use ‘advanced' Internet-distributed hacking tools. Of that group, nearly a third claimed to have used them on at least one occasion.
Advanced tools, even. Well now. Pretty big news, wouldn't you say? You might indeed, if you (like Mr. John E. Dunn, our intrepid reporter) didn't read anything more than the Panda Press Release. If you read the actual study, you find this:
The surveys were carried out online
Stand down from Battle Stations, all.

And a quick, helpful note to Mr. Dunn: 98% of teenagers aged 15 to 18 claim to have gotten lucky last Friday night with that hot chick from advanced placement Calculus.

Well, they do.

2 comments:

Bob S. said...

Most of the distributed hacking scripts are well known and protected against by any up to date anti-virus software.

I'm not impressed by the claim, script kiddies aren't a major liability unless your AV isn't configured to auto update.

Borepatch said...

Bob, this is true. I find the most interesting tools run on Linux anyway - you're unlikely to have (or need) a good antivirus for that.

One way to look at this is that having a shop full of wordworking tools doesn't make me Norm Abrams.

Another way to look at it is "people lie on online polls."