Can you still think of what you played every day when you were 8 years old? Maybe playing hide and seek with the kids downstairs? Chasing a comic book serial at home? Or play a small game of planting and stealing vegetables on the computer?
While the peers are still obsessed with these relatively "basic" small games, there are such a group of teenagers who "deal with" the Internet, who are already busy discovering and patching the loopholes in the game programs, and some have even become proficient in using " The "little genius" of "hacker" technology has repeatedly shown off the "miracles" of the Internet. for example:
An 8-year-old primary school student directly hacked the answering system of the school website because he "didn't want to do homework"; a 5-year-old kid discovered a security loophole in Microsoft's Xbox One and was added to the thank you page and security researchers by Microsoft List; A 16-year-old boy hacked into the computer of NASA Space Flight Center and downloaded 1.7 million worth of software, becoming the first minor in the world to be arrested for hacking...
With the development of technology, more and more children have been exposed to programming since childhood, and "hackers" are also constantly "child-like". Today we will take stock of the TOP 10 world-renowned teenage "genius" hackers.
Boy as young as 5 discovers Microsoft Xbox One security flaw
A 5-year-old boy named Vaughn Hassel in California, USA, became the youngest "hacker" in the world even though his speech was a little unclear. Vaughan Hassell rose to fame when he discovered a security breach in his Xbox live account, surprising even his parents.
The cause of the incident was that he wanted to play a game with an age limit of 16 years old, but his father was afraid that he would be exposed to the violent images in the game, so he specially set a password for the game console Xbox One at home for this purpose.
And 5-year-old Vaughn Hassel soon discovered a security hole in Microsoft's Xbox One.
He discovered an easy way to bypass the Xbox One login security by entering an incorrect passcode once, then hitting the spacebar multiple times while entering the passcode a second time, and he was able to gain access to his father's Xbox One account.
His father, Robert Davis, a computer engineer, then reported the vulnerability his son discovered to Microsoft. Microsoft fixed the vulnerability immediately after receiving the report and added Vaughn Hassell's name to a thank you page and a list of security researchers.
8-year-old self-taught programming, "hacked" the school system because he didn't want to write homework
Born in 2001, the youngest "hacker" in China has shown extraordinary computer talent since he was a child. When he was in elementary school, he directly "hacked" the school's answering system because he didn't want to do his homework, and informed the school teacher of the loophole. He is China's youngest "hacker" Wang Zhengyang.
In the second grade of elementary school, he likes to play computer games like other peers, but it didn’t take long for him to feel bored when he was 8 years old. He started to teach himself programming and tried to write some programs. His parents also supported his hobby and gave him Bought a lot of related books.
At the age of 13, Wang Zhengyang reported a system security vulnerability that may affect hundreds of educational websites to 360. After the problem was solved, the company offered him an olive branch, but he was rejected, and Wang Zhengyang became famous in a "fight" from then on. In September of the same year, Wang Zhengyang was invited to participate in the China Internet Security Conference and became the youngest invited guest on the scene.
At the age of 14, he created a personal website with self-taught programming knowledge, and then searching for "website bugs" became a hobby of his. He also discovered a website loophole during an online shopping, and successfully tried to use 1 cent to buy a product with an original price of 2,500 yuan. Then he also reported the loophole to the person in charge of the website, so that the loophole can be repaired in time.
Wang Zhengyang said that he is willing to be called and hopes to be a "white hat". His purpose is only to help the website to be repaired and improved, and he will not use technology to do illegal things.
US military intelligence analyst sentenced to 45 years in prison, first "agent" and then "rich man"
James Costa was an IT consultant earning $1,500 a year when he was only 13 years old. Sentenced to 45 years in prison as an "adult" for 45 counts of technology theft after attacking IBM and GE at age 14. After a year of probation, he became a U.S. Navy intelligence analyst at 18 and a CIA agent at 20.
In addition, he convinced his middle school to allow him to form a "computer club" that would allow him to manage his own IT business at the school.
In the late 1990s, Costa chose to leave the CIA because he was tired of the job of an agent. He was later recruited by Microsoft as a direct contractor, negotiating and cooperating with various companies. He and his brother co-founded a business website specializing in financial markets, one of the earliest and most successful business websites in the United States. In 1999, at the age of 24, Costa sold the site for millions of dollars.
Today, James Costa, a middle-aged man, runs a 3G video game production company with annual revenue of more than $10 million.
16-year-old intrusion into NASA, the "legend" of the US Department of Defense
Jonathan James, as one of the five most famous hackers in history, although his life was extremely short, his experience can be described as "wonderful".
On June 29 and 30, 1999, Jonathan James illegally hacked into 13 computer systems of the US Department of Defense (DOD) with the user name "c0mrade", using two different original addresses of Internet service providers to launch attacks. As part of the intrusion, he obtained and downloaded proprietary software from NASA worth approximately $1.7 million. These software support the physical environment of the International Space Station (ISS), including the control of real-time temperature and humidity inside the cabin. As a result of the hack and data raid, NASA's computer systems were shut down for 21 days in July 1999, costing more than $41,000. This also made him the first minor in the world to be arrested for hacking.
But Jonathan James also has some "hack behavior" worth mentioning. In 1999, a virus called Melissa spread rapidly through email, overloading the emails of the infected computers, causing companies like Microsoft, Intel-T, Lockheed Martin, and Lucent Technologies to shut down email networks and causing $80 million in damages . Later, Jonathan James cooperated with the FBI and successfully tracked down the publisher of the virus, David Smith, and assisted the FBI in arresting him. The following year, he also helped the FBI find out the source of the love bug virus, which made him famous.
On May 18, 2008, Jonathan James died of cancer. While documents regarding his death have never been released, it is not difficult to speculate that one of his associates, Adrian Rameau, claimed that James took his own life with a pistol.
"Slap in the face" Apple, Sony, mocking Tesla's "mad genius"
At the age of 5, he wrote his first set of computer programs. At the age of 14, he was shortlisted for the final of the Intel International Science and Engineering Grand Prix with his self-made surveying and mapping robot. In high school, he created a brain wave that appeared only in science fiction books. The control system was once again shortlisted for the Intel competition. George Hotz can be described as a "mad genius".
When he was 17 years old, he used only a screwdriver and a guitar pick to pry open the original iPhone, found the baseband processor, soldered a line on this small chip, and successfully cracked it with signal interference, making the iPhone It is not limited to use in the AT&T network, but has directly become a full Netcom.
Two years later, he developed the first publicly released iPhone 3GS jailbreak software, named "purplera1n", also known as "Purple Rain", and became an outstanding contributor to iOS jailbreak technology. Later, he hacked the Sony PS3 and started a hacking war. After that, he rejected Musk's million-dollar annual salary and built his own unmanned car, established his own self-driving company Comma.ai and open-sourced self-driving data. The point is that George's entire system has only more than 2,000 lines of code, and the cost of such a system is only $1,000. And Tesla's self-driving price has reached $8,000.
9-year-old demonstrates 15-minute hacking of Android phones, 11-year-old becomes CEO
Ruben Paul has learned computer knowledge and skills from his father, an expert in computer security, since he was 6 years old. When Paul was 11 years old, he became the CEO of a company. The online intellectual game application developed by his company "Shensi Game" is very popular among people.
At the RSA conference held in 2015, when Juniper's chief security architect Chris Hoff unveiled the curtain on the podium to show a server group up to two meters high, it was 9-year-old Ruben Paul who made an introduction. He was at the event to demonstrate how to hack an Android phone in 15 minutes.
In May 2017, at the 2017 International Security Network Conference held in the Netherlands, 11-year-old hacker Paul connected a 'Raspberry Pi' to his laptop to search for all Bluetooth-enabled devices in the venue. Using the computer programming language Python, he successfully hacked into the devices of the attendees and used their devices to control his teddy bear to record audio and turn on lights."
Paul said at the time: From airplanes to cars, from smartphones to smart homes, any toy can be part of the Internet of Things (IOT), and any device in the Internet can pose a threat to people, even a teddy bear. It can be used as a "weapon" by hackers. He also said that as a member of the participants, the purpose of this is not for fun, but to remind people to have sufficient awareness of network security.
"Hacked" all over the large US retailers and successfully stole 200 million US dollars
Albert Gonzalez is one of the greatest hackers in history.
His experience is quite legendary. After dropping out of a university in Miami in his early years, he began to steal credit card account numbers and passwords, and he also served as an informant for US intelligence agencies. Hackers from all over the world led by Gonzalez "hacked" almost all large retailers in the United States, causing at least $200 million in losses to these companies.
He later used his skills to orchestrate a large credit card scheme. In 2003, he was accused of being a member of the hacking group ShadowCrew, which stole and sold information on 1.5 million credit card accounts. Between 2005 and 2007, Albert Gonzalez and his associates stole an estimated $200 million from 170 million credit card and ATM numbers. He did all of this in just two years, the largest credit card theft in human history, but he avoided jail time by providing evidence and information to the authorities. But soon, he went back to the old way and became the "brain" of the hacker gang.
In March 2010, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for hacking and stealing information from various companies. His goal, according to chat logs, is to get $15 million, buy a yacht and retire. At the time of the scheme, he was working for the U.S. Secret Service, earning $75,000 a year.
Real-life "Rain Man" who launched DDoS attacks on 2,000 websites around the world
Chapple has autism, but he can be called a genius hacker. At the age of 15, Chapple was recruited by two hackers from Israel to work as an administrator of the underground website vDos-s.com. Chapple is responsible for providing software tools to other hackers to help them implement distributed denial of service DDoS attacks.
From May 1, 2015 to April 30, 2016, Chapple participated in launching DDoS attacks on more than 2,000 websites around the world. Among the victims were Amazon, Netflix, NatWest online banking, Pornhub, the British National Criminal Investigation Agency, VirginMedia, The BBC, T-Mobile, O2, EE, Sprint, Verizon, UC San Diego and MIT, all while Chappelle works in his parents' bedroom.
On December 19, 2017, Chapple was sentenced to 16 months in prison by a court in Manchester for allegedly using the Internet to attack large multinational companies such as Amazon, Netflix and the BBC, with a suspended sentence of 2 years and no need to go to prison to serve his sentence.
When Judge Mosley Green made a verdict on Chappell on the spot, he said that Chappell was involved in one of the most commercially valuable DDoS attacks in the world, and said he was sorry to see such a talent in the dock, saying that he was arrested Someone with a heart took advantage of it, like a "real version of Rain Man".
Reddit founder, 'Robin Hood' of the digital age
Aaron Schwartz is known as a "little prodigy" in the United States. At the age of 14, he became a master of computer programming. He co-wrote the famous RSS 1.0 specification and became famous in the local software industry. He became one of the celebrities in the American programming industry. He devoted his life to For "information sharing and freedom of speech, it can be called the "Robin Hood" of the digital age.
When he was 12 years old, he used the most primitive equipment, the most primitive computer and the Internet in his room to set up a website called get.info (The info.org) is a free online encyclopedia that everyone can find at Add, edit, and organize content on the site.
Later, Aaron had the honor to join the W3C RDF core working group and jointly developed the key RSS (Simple Syndication) communication protocol. At this time, he was only 14 years old.
In 2004, Aaron enrolled at Stanford University, dropping out a year later. Aaron co-founded Reddit in 2005. In 2006 Reddit was acquired by Condé Nast. In 2012, Reddit had more than 30 million news items, 37 billion page views, and more than 40 million unique visitors. In October last year, Reddit achieved 3.8 billion page views and 46 million unique visitors in a single month.
Later, Aaron was accused of illegally intruding into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and JSTOR (full name Journal Storage, an online system for storing academic journals), and was sentenced to a maximum of 35 years in prison and a fine of $1 million. During the plea and plea stage of the case, Aaron hanged himself with a belt in his apartment in Brooklyn, New York. His body was later found by his girlfriend at the age of 26.
One of the founders of Facebook, once known as the "Internet Prophet"
Sean Parker was born in Virginia, USA in 1979. He started to learn software programming at the age of 7, and became one of the hackers tracked by the FBI at the age of 16. When Parker was in high school, his biggest after-school hobby was attacking websites around the world. Parker even made a special list, determined to hack the websites of all countries on this list.
At the age of 18, he developed Napster, the earliest pirated music sharing website in history; at the age of 21, he founded the address book service company Plaxo; at the age of 24, he joined Mark Zuckerberg's team and served as Facebook's first as president.
As one of the founders of Facebook, Parker was described by the media as follows: Parker advised the then young Zuckerberg on how to run the business, and created a shareholding structure for Facebook, permanently endowing Zuckerberg with absolute power. Parker was also a key figure in creating the popular photo-sharing app for Facebook.
Later, he left Facebook due to a drug scandal, but Parker did not stop at this point to "change the world". Sean Fanning, who developed Napster with him, found him again and jointly created the web video calling website Airtime In addition, he has also invested in more than a dozen entrepreneurial teams and established several research funds for cancer, allergies and other diseases.
The "bleaching" process of teenage genius hackers is important
In today's network globalization, juvenile "genius hacker" crimes occur frequently. How to prevent and guide these teenagers' computer talents into the right path is a difficult problem facing the world.
A British study of teenagers arrested for online crimes showed they were less likely to engage in online fraud, harassment or theft. Because most of the attacks they carry out are driven by moral or political motives, some even just want to impress friends or gain credit, and some just want to let the company know that they have unpatched Vulnerabilities, and use this to prove their abilities.
Teenage hackers motivated by these motivations are actually very easy to be led on the path of "white hat hackers," the researchers said. Compared with "hackers", "white hat hackers" are called "information security defenders". They are the "guardians" of the Internet world and an indispensable backbone in the context of "Internet +". Especially with the frequent occurrence of network security incidents in recent years, the concept of information security has become popular among the people, and major enterprises have begun to set up special network security positions, and network security talents have also become "scarce resources".
In order for these young hackers to "reform" they only need key people to make key reminders at critical moments and build a firewall for their hearts, so as to achieve the ultimate goal of "whitewashing" hackers and make these "geniuses" truly become The "leading force" of network security fills the gap of global network security talent scarcity.