The CyberChoices campaign launches today and is focused around a television advertisement. It features a teenage boy and his parents who discuss his intelligence and knowledge of computers.
At one point, the boy’s father says “Listen, how smart is this, you know them shooter games, the other day he was losing, so he crashed the server.” The video later shows the boy downloading his GCSE coursework and hacking bank accounts as his parents agree he will become the next “Steve Gates” after a top degree in computing.
As the video progresses, it becomes apparent that the teenager is actually using his skills maliciously. It closes with the family in custody as they are questioned by NCA investigators. The video aims to show parents what they may be missing if their son is using his computer all night while they live under the impression that cyber crime doesn’t affect them.
The NCA says the campaign targets “the parents of 12-15 year old boys” knowledgeable in computing and programming. It says this group of children “may be involved in hacking or other kinds of cyber crime without their parents’ knowledge.” It hopes to highlight the kind of illegal activities that teen programmers could participate in behind their parents’ backs while raising awareness of the potential consequences.
Increasingly, cyberattacks are led by people under the age of 18. The average age of suspected cyber criminals in NCA investigations is now 17, compared with 24 last year. The NCA is aware of at least one child as young as 12 who purchased a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) online, software that lets its user remotely monitor and control computers.
The campaign hopes to convince young programmers to use their sought-after skills for good by training as cyber security specialists or software developers. A report today found the best cyber security professionals charge as much as £10,000 a day as the industry remains desperately understaffed. The NCA hopes to “channel the skills” of teenagers to get them protecting IT systems rather than attacking them.
Richard Jones, the Head of the National Cyber Crime Unit’s Prevent team, said: “Over the past few years the NCA has seen the people engaging in cyber crime becoming younger and younger. We know that simply criminalising young people cannot be the solution to this and so the campaign seeks to help motivate children to use their skills more positively.”
He added: “We want these young people, and their parents, to understand that choosing that path [of hacking] can result in a criminal record, can limit their choices for their future, and can put restrictions on their daily lives including the loss of access to the internet.”
One NCA operation against users of the ‘Lizard Stresser’ DDoS tool, capable of forcing websites offline by flooding them with artificially generated requests, found all seven of the people involved were aged under 18. The group have been arrested. Recently, a 15-year-old boy from Northern Ireland was arrested in connection with the major cyber-attack against UK broadband provider TalkTalk earlier this year.
The NCA’s campaign is supported by partners including GetsafeOnline, CREST and the Cyber Security Challenge UK. The video advertisement ends with the message “Cyber crime wrecks lives”, warning parents they need to help their child make the right choices.
