Young children are learning computer programming languages so they can hack into their favorite online games and friends’ accounts. The children are then stealing virtual currency and items in an attempt to sit atop their favorite game’s leader board.
Hacking both social media and gaming sites the children typically use rudimentary coding skills that are easily caught by programs from antivirus firm AVG.
The coding is typically written in Visual Basic or C#. In one case, an 11-year-old boy in Canada foolishly included his email address, password, and additional information inside of the code he created. Police used that information to track down the young hacker.
Hacking from younger generations is more prevalent these day as initiatives to teach the art of programming to children begin to take off. Kids are now creating their very own apps, learning how to develop in HTML, and even taking classes in Javascript.
Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer at AVG, says the biggest concern at this time is teaching kids responsible practices for computing coding. Speaking to the BBC , Ben-Itzhak explains:
“You teach your children that you can’t take a toy without paying – so I think this type of a message needs to get to the kids when they’re writing software too.”
It is that exact type of stealing that has put children into real world illegal situations. Thankfully at this time, kids are being caught for stealing virtual currency and social media account information and not bank account numbers and other highly valuable information.
[Image via ShutterStock ]
