Times Have Changed - Gen Alpha Hacker Groups

In the 80's - What I saw growing up was we had white hats (the good guys), grey hats (the goal to pursue knowledge) and black hats (the bad guys) where we all started with a interest in technology.

Trying to figure it all out, understand the technology and tinker with it for our own purpose.

• Maybe it was to beat a video game, mod-it changing the resource files or customize your OS settings.
• Maybe it was a prank or to play a game inside a browser leveraging an easter egg
• Maybe it was using a captain crunch whistle, phreaking to make phone calls for free
• Maybe it was more harmful such as remote trojans such as backoffrice, password crackers such jack the ripper or l0phtcrack.

Back then publications like 2600 were the dark web before there was a dark web and individuals such as Kevin Mitnick started using tech for fun and pranks before things went seriously wrong.

Fast Forward to Today for Gen Alpha - Unfortunately the younger generations born with tech in their hand have even more challenges to deal with

• Cyber Bullying
• Cyber Gangs
• Sextorsion
• Ransomware
• More Challenges on Attribution of an Attack

The Engagement Has Changed

• Minecraft chat rooms where people are trying to "one-up" each other, brutally attacking the noobs (newbies) and stealing from each other to take others processions
• This behavior on certain online servers has resulted in online gangs playing together and then sharing TTP (techniques, tactics and procedures) to start to use technology for other purposes such as SIM swapping and online fraud
• Stories are shared on how young kids can leverage loopholes in the law about saying they have mental health issues to skip punishments and not be held accountable for their actions
• For non-compliance to these gangs, people are backtracked to their homes with home invasions unfortunately on the rise.
• Cyber gangs are getting so competitive that they are starting to attack people in real life to steal their competitors crypto, tools and techniques

The Language Has Changed - Like it Always Does

Each generation re-appropriates words to create their own culture, slang and ability to create the new cool. For the 5th graders at my kids school, thankfully they provided us parents a dictionary!

                          Gen-A Dictionary - Words have different meanings
- Selling: You lost us the game bro
- Cap: Lie
- Fire: That is so cool
- Slay: Cool in an enthusiastic way
- Goat: the GREATEST OF ALL TIME
- Let him cook: Player who goes CRAZY (to cook) NOT to cook in a kitchen.

                                                  Common References:
- Grimace Shake: A milkshake from McDonalds that when you drink it, you get injured because Grimace is to powerful. Grimace is a purple dude from McDonald's.

- Sus: Suspicious (from the game Among Us)
- Baby Gronk: 11 yr old kid who arrogant and overconfident. He thinks he is the GOAT at football, but he isn’t.
- Rizz: Having charisma. Short for charisma. (Example: Are you from Tennesee because you’re the only 10 I see.)
- Sigma: A lone wolf.
- Chad: A sigma.
- Mew: To show off your jawline
- Bean: cringe; deezy
- Deezy: cringe
- Skibidi: bad or evil, used in the mini-movie series on YouTube Skibidi Toilet
- Fanum Tax: The theft of food between friends; from the Twitch Streamer Fanum
- Ohio: a state that has weird stuff in it; came from the song Down In Ohio
- Corn Kid: an eight-year-old named Tariq who loves corn so much; came from the interview with Tariq and Recess Therapy, got attention when it became a song called Its Corn
- CaseOh: A Twitch Streamer who gets fun of for being overweight; gets parody songs made about him about burgers (Example: Burgers in the Back, parody of the song Old Town Road).
- It’s giving: followed by words like sus or Ohio (Example: It’s giving sus rizzler Ohio vibes)
- Freddy Fazbear: Bear from Five Nights at Freddy’s
- Griddy: Fortnite dance that got popular because of the wide receiver Justin Jefferson
- Backrooms: an area where you can not escape from        

Hacker Groups Are Growing into what is known as "The COM"

• Multiple unique hacker groups competing, sharing and sometimes even fighting between themselves
• Trying to find the zero day exploit to move quickly and leverage it as much as possible
• In some cases even getting into a system and putting in a backdoor, and then patching the original vulnerability so that nobody else can get in.. so they "owned it" and got in first.

the com
star graud
pugartory
doxbin / ViLE 
ACG
Brick squad
764
Zone
FBH
LAPSUS#
kenkar
7667
CVLT
#HK
Kaskar
Valha[.]la
Beige Group        

What Can We Do To Stop this New Age of Younger Hackers influenced by Cyber Gangs?

Like a normal gang

• We need to attribute attacks to specific gangs and be 100% specific . Don't generalize but follow the breadcrumbs based on the user handles and signatures as there is a lot of psychology to it. Hackers are trying to dominate other hackers, trying to increase their rank and be the best. Try to find the source of the attacks so you know who you are actually dealing with and not assuming it is 1 big group.. find the specific group
• We need intervention for the individuals. on a 1:1 basis.. taking the individual out of the situation they are in to help them. sometimes people are scared and at risk and they can't be helped until they first feel safe.
• We need to de-program bad behaviors. If you only know one way of being and it increases pleasure or decreases pain.. that is probably what you are going to do. Instead we need to educate individuals on the lonely paths of destruction that leads from a life of crime.
• We need compassion to help people but not ignorance on who is willing to be helped.
• We need government programs to leverage their expertise in breaking up physical gangs to be applied to cyber gangs.

In the UK and other countries they are already doing this but not all countries have followed suite. For more reading, here are some useful references

• CNET