Kids are the future, and if this years Defcon is anything to go by, we will have a new raft of hackers waiting in the wings.

In an article written by PCMAG, Defcon let the younger 8-16 year old kids show off their hacking skills and hopefully get pointed at a young age in the right (white hat) direction.

A 10 year old girl was the talk of the show as she found an effective exploit within an unnamed social game. She tinkered with the games internal clock to speed it up. This was done was playing the game over a wifi network, quitting, and then adjusting the phones clock manually.

Simply by moving the game clock forward she could unlock items before it would let her normally and could perform actions ahead of the planned time. She detailed this in a stage presentation called “Apps-A Traveler of Both Time and Space, And What I Learned About Zero-Days and Responsible Disclosure.”

Her presentation summary said “The world of apps has obviously not thought about security yet. Here is an important lesson they can learn from a Girl Scout. I'll show a new class of vulnerabilities I call TimeTraveler. By controlling time, you can do many things, such as grow pumpkins instantly. This technique enables endless possibilities. I'll show you how. Wanna play a game? Let's find some zero-days! (Cuz it's fun!)”

Kitguru says: It is certainly a little way off hacking into a protected business network, but for a 10 year old girl, she certainly seems to be showing some potential.

Become a Patron!