Question

why do you think people seek to go that route of becoming a script kiddie as opposed to actually following through with an education?

Answer 1

Script kiddie

A script kiddie is a term that refers to young programmers and hacking enthusiasts who may not have knowledge of actual hacking but make use of pre-existing applications or scripts on the web.

The internet age of today has made anything digital easily accessible. Anything on the web is just a click away. All that one needs is a pc and internet access. That applies to all the open-source software especially hacking software too. The brains involved in developing such apps are quite brilliant and they only know how these actually function at the backend. These can be a boon for programmers who want to learn cybersecurity. But a script kiddie can land himself in trouble using such apps for hacking as he may not know the actual functioning and what kind of data is the application transmitting. It might look quite appealing for a script kiddie to hack others as shown in movies. Initially they might be prone to cyberbullying which might later result in some nefarious activity.

But these script kiddie can also turnout notorious for the software developers or the script developers too. They can make use of social engineering and find some vulnerabilities or bugs in the scripts and make them work to their own advantage. They may somehow make their victims to grant them access or get hold of their sensitive data. They can create fake mails and portals thus posing a threat for common people on the web.

The route of becoming a script kiddie is chosen by many programmers as opposed to going through with an education because the young programmers find it cool. They are young, they have the energy but what they lack is patience and proper utilization of that energy. They want to have access to everything just like a hacker in the movie "Mr. ROBOT" . People find such movies very lucrative and they just want to imitate the protagonist. Many of them look for shortcuts. They want to get there as soon as possible. They want to stamp their supremacy over others. They visit every nook and corner of the internet to find a tool that can help them achieve that. They are quite unkown of the fact that what they seek can only be achieved through a proper education, determination and experience. All they see in a hacker be it in a movie or in real life is that how cool he look, how powerful he is, but what they do not look is his struggle, his determination and the amount of hard work he has put in to be there. Movies show about the hacker's personal life and struggle involved in it but somewhere down the line people ignore it because it doesnt looks appealing to them.

Going through the traditional route of gaining education, implementing that education and gaining experience from it requires a lot of time and efforts. Therefore people follow the route of becoming a script kiddie.

Hope this helps :)