The Australian Federal Police has turned to teens to help fight cyber-crime. It seems that the AFP has been keeping careful eye on several online forums that discuss hacking. These forums attract the experienced and amateur hackers where they can discuss fine-tuning their abilities. And as is usually the case with advanced technology, it is the young who are becoming more and more proficient on a daily basis. It is these youth that the AFP is targeting in an effort to intervene before they cross the line and break the law.

Some of these ‘potential hackers’ are as young as fifteen. When the police show up at the door to discuss their kids online activities with parents it is more than just a preventative measure. These youths are confronted with the threat of what could happen to them if their efforts at hacking into social media accounts or government websites are successful. Then they are presented with the concept of using their hacking skills on the side of law enforcement instead of law breaking.

Hacking has been a serious issue in Australia as it was in March that the Reserve Bank of Australia was hacked numerous times in an effort to gain access to internal information. Some of these attempts were traced back to malware that was created by the Chinese. The attempts were the result of malware sent via email to Reserve Bank employees.

In 2012, the AFP aided law enforcement in Romania in charging ten persons over a hacking that compromised the credit card information of many Australians. There were a half a million credit cards that were duplicated and used to purchase thirty million dollars’ worth of merchandise in four different countries. It is in the hacking forums run by crime syndicates like those being monitored by the AFP that teens are learning these skills. The teens are considered a valuable resource for police work when they choose to help law enforcement rather than to join the ranks of cyber-criminals.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.