Earlier tonight, I reluctantly allowed my 11 year old son to enter an AOL chatroom with one of his school friends. Usually, I have noted, kids in chatrooms use the opportunity to cuss a lot. Kinda like Beavis and Butthead, “Heh, heh, heh, you said dick, heh, heh…” and so forth.
Well, I wacthed the screen as the two were chatting and the first thing that comes up is a string of characters that look like a hand flipping a bird. Then a bunch of lines like “searching for shared passwords” and “important files deleted” started popping up! I had my son ask his “friend” what he was doing and he replied “hack attack”. I told my son to let his “friend” know that I was standing right behind him. The “friend’s” reply: “oh ok”. As a precaution, I backed up my data files and had everyone change their AOL passwords.
So the question is this: is it possible to get hacked this way?
My son called his “friend” and asked what he had done and he replied that he was “just typing stuff”. Yeah, right. The lines he was “typing” appeared way too fast for an 11 yr-old. I restarted my computer and it seems to be OK. My son is currently banned from chatrooms until I find out more about this “friend”. Luckily, he is a student at my son’s school and my wife is a teacher there as well!
While I’m sure there are others responding at this time, let me put in my $.02. Currently there is no way to get a virus or be hacked by just being in a chat room. If you are on IRC and run certain clients and have them configured a certain way someone could send you a trojan that would infect your computer but that can not (currently) be done in AOL chat’s. Unless your son ran a program he was sent his ‘friend’ can’t do anything and was most likley running a script that printed something on the screen or he pasted something into the message area and hit send. His friend sounds like he may be becomming a ‘script kiddie’ and may be intrested in becomming a ‘hax0r’ (hacker) although true hackers try to find out more about systems and are there to just learn the term hacker has taken too much of a negative trend and I can not turn it back. I suggest you read some issues of 2600 and educate yourself and your son. Computer and Network security will be big in the future and if you could build some systems for home with different operating systems and let him and his friends they to “hack” into them you may give them skils that will help later in life.
The “friend” did include a URL, but told my son not to click on it. He didn’t. Unfortunately, I spazzed and didn’t make a note of the address. My son insists his friend was kidding, but this goes into the category of “Things You Don’t Joke About”. BTW, the “friend” is in his second term as a sixth grader. Terms like “quiet” and “loner” are popping up. This does not comfort me in the least. The fact that father is a priest doesn’t make it any better. In my experience, children of authority figures have tended be less than honorable. (Note to potential flamethrowers: this is just MY experience. I am not generalizing although it looks like it. )
You say he told your son not to click on it and he didn’t. It is safe to assume you meant either He told my son to click on it and he did not, or he told your son not to click on it and your son did click it. If the second one you should be able to check your history to see where the link sent you.
If you do not have one you may want to consider a personal firewall such as the one from Zone Alarms. Also depending on what version of AOL you use there may be some security holes open. If you want assistance checking your system is closed feel free to E-mail me or you can read the latest columns Fred Langa (http://www.langa.com) wrote about them and how to close them off
It was probably just a joke, in some chat formats there are ways to make windows pop up on somebody else’s window if they have certain options set up, but most of the time it’s just a scare tactic, they have no real access to your computer. “searching for sharedpasswords” and “important files deleted”? Hah, was this in the regular text window? He could simply have been typing those phrases (perhaps in a different font or color scheme) or cutting and pasting them from another window if you don’t think he could type that fast.
This is nothing to worry about. Just little kiddies trying to act like they r real hackers. He probably used one of many proggies which scroll the fake codes. No worry. The only real damage that could happen is they sometimes will end up blocking the chat window by excessive scrolling. BTW, when you r on AOL, you r behind a firewall. Usually no need to worry about using another firewall just for general security. Well, I am sure the kids were just trying to scare you, but don’t let them bother u. The little snerts will come into just about all of the AOL chatrooms. Use the “ignore” feature if they r bothering you.
And if it turns out that the kid is “quiet” and a “loner”, does that mean that he is a bad kid? By itself, no. The fact that he may not being good in school doesn’t make him a bad kid either. Because he was trying to scare your son into thinking that your computer is being hacked is mostly just a little kids prank. I think of it as the Ding Dong Ditch of the 21st century. Your son goes to the door and finds nobody there…eerie, no? Happens again, still nobody there. Scary? It can be. It may even provoke a serious response from others. However it is harmless. I did it myself during 7th grade if I remember correctly. (10th grade currently) I thought it was cool to scare people like that. Got boring after awhile though. I would treat this more as an isolated incident than anything else. Struggling in school and being a loner may not be evidence of a bad child at all. I remember 6th grade as a time of huge change both mentally and physically. Good luck!
Not True AOL 5 and 6 installs a VPN client that you can not remove (If you rmeove it AOL adds it back) and turns on File and Print sharing. So if you don’t know about this and do not have a firewall you are vunurable
