Cyber Criminals Go Back to School

According to a report conducted by Mcafee, the recent boom in cyber crime is forcing criminals to go to great lengths to recruit skilled hackers.  The report claims that cyber crime gangs, who have the inclination and criminal skills no longer have the technological know-how to keep up and are being forced to recruit younger, tech-savvy students to carry out their cyber biddings.

These cyber gangs are recruiting the next generation of techies by sponsoring students through their IT degree, with the expectation that they will bring their ‘unique skill set’ back to the gang after graduation. Hyping up the glamours hacker lifestyle (as seen in this movie) is apperantly also a favored tactic for the criminal recruiters when reaching out to the younger kids.

Greg Day, security analyst at McAfee and one of the
authors of the Virtual Criminology report, said it [the report] aimed to explore the
digital underground and how and where the criminal and hi-tech worlds
meet.

We wanted to understand a bit more about the motivation and how people end up on this career path, said Mr Day.

BBC:
Criminals ‘target tech students’