Our Kids Are Targets.

Recently my seven year old daughter brought to my attention that her account had been hijacked on a popular website dedicated to children. The password had been changed along with the email that was associated with the account.
Through further investigation I found that not only had her account been hacked and locked out but her computer had been rooted (pwned).   The bad actor had convinced her that she could earn free points (used to buy in game items) on the site by giving her account information and password.
Further investigation of the machine showed non standard 443 connections to a major university as well as a known command and control (or CnC server) site for a popular rootkit.   Basically her machine had become a jump host to attack other networks using our ISP as a source.
 
We need to protect our children by educating them about the nature of these attackers as the situation could have been worse.  If I had not been working as a professional in the industry this machine could have been used for much more malicious purposes, and more of the machines, including mine own computer could have been data-mined for banking information, work information and much more.

I am a firm believer a child should not have a computer in the privacy of their own room.  Computers should be in a public location of the house and monitored by the parents.  Children are often exploited by predators, shown offensive images or invited to provide personal information and now targets of even more malicious types of attacks such as the one I have described in this article.  

Here are some resources and good articles I have found to help educate yourselves and your children about using the internet in the household. 

• Four  things you can do to help protect kids online.

   

 

Children's Internet Protection Act