‘I fell into it’: ex-criminal hackers urge Manchester pupils to use web skills for good | Hacking

Cybercriminals, shadowy online figures often depicted in Hollywood movies as hooded villains who can wipe millions of pounds off the value of businesses with a keystroke, are not generally known for their outspokenness.

But this week two former hackers at a sixth-form college in Manchester gave youngsters an honest assessment of what a life of internet crime is really like.

The young people in the room listen carefully, but the daily internal discussions they hear are not subject to scenarios.

“People get into these online dramas and beat each other up, defame each other, and make people throw bricks at their windows,” says one of the hackers.

If the language sounds foreign, “swatting” and “doxing” should involve people exposing each other online by posting their real identities; However, the message they give is clear: Although cyber crimes may seem attractive, the reality is not like that at all.

The hackers are former members of a sprawling cybercrime ecosystem called “The Com,” and they’re here for a very specific reason: to encourage talented young people to use their gaming and coding skills for good.

The speech is part of an initiative supported by the Co-operative, which suffered a debilitating attack in April last year. The retailer has teamed up with The Hacking Games, an initiative that identifies talented gamers to test companies’ IT systems and asks young people to use their skills to help companies fight against criminal hackers.

Conor Freeman, 26, from Dublin, jailed for just under three years in 2020 for his role in the $2 million cryptocurrency theft, spoke to students at Connell Co-op College near Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium last week.

Freeman became part of Com, short for “community”, after being groomed online by an older teenager while playing Minecraft. The Society began participating in hacking forums on the dark web and eventually hacking people’s crypto wallets along with other Com members.

“I came across different dark web hacking forums and that’s when things really started to heat up,” he says. “I got into different communities, different groups, made friends with a few different people, and then I found myself involved in large-scale cryptocurrency theft.”

Freeman has served 11 months of his sentence and now works as an ethical hacker at The Hacking Games.

Fergus Hay, co-founder and CEO of The Hacking Games, said there is “100% overlap” between gaming and hacking. Describing gaming as “a living laboratory for skill development,” Hay said skills learned while gaming (specifically “modding,” or creating software to help you modify a video game) can be used in hacking or cybersecurity.

“And the people who figure it out are the bad guys,” Hay says. He adds: “So here’s a generation of born hackers who have incredible talent, but are invisible. No one has seen their skills because they’re not advertised on LinkedIn.”

Hay’s company has designed an AI-powered test to identify skills among proficient players who could move into cybersecurity and help companies detect flaws in their IT systems through “red teaming” (or ethical hacking), in which their networks are exposed to attacks by expert computer users.

Freeman was joined via video link by 30-year-old US citizen Ricky Handschumacher, who was part of the same crypto heist and spent four years in prison for the crime. The conversation at Connell College was the first time Freeman and Handschumacher saw each other physically. Handschumacher, who also got involved with Com through gaming, told viewers he would have taken a different path if he had known “you could get paid a lot of money to do the right thing.”

Computer students who attended the speech said they were inspired.

“The lesson is that there are great opportunities for you to get into the computer industry, but you have to be careful what you do because if you do something wrong it will quickly damage your future,” said 17-year-old Suheil.

Rob Elsey, the Co-op group’s chief digital officer, who led the organisation’s fight against a ransomware attack that caused £120 million in lost profits, said the talks were “to help young people understand that the digital skills they already have can be a force for good, protecting people, organizations and communities, rather than being misused or exploited”.

The co-operative plans to deliver more Hacking Games talks at 38 school academies this year.

Four people, three of them teenagers, were arrested at addresses in the West Midlands, Staffordshire and London as part of an investigation into a triple cyber attack on the Co-op, Marks & Spencer and Harrods in July last year.