Last week at the DefCon hacking conference in Las Vegas there were some unfamiliar faces wandering around the event: teens and children. For the first time since it was founded 18 years ago, DefCon has opened its doors to young people ages 8 to 16. Parents who regularly attend the event were delighted about the news. All of the young attendees had to be accompanied by an adult, and some of the most difficult competitions were geared toward the young participants. Those competitions included lock-picking and finding the weak points in popular software and computer hardware. The kids in attendance did not disappoint adults who were mesmerized by their skills.
One hacker that really impressed the crowds was a 10-year old who went by the name CyFi, who discovered how to hack mobile games on Android and iOS devices. CyFi discovered that adjusting her phone’s clock allowed her to speed up the progress of the game. CyFi also discovered that, by disconnecting the phone’s Wi-Fi, she could make the clock adjustments and then resume play at a faster rate.
CyFi called it a "zero-day hack" and showed off her technique to 100 fellow hackers at DefCon. The hack is called zero-day because game developers have not figured out that their games may be vulnerable to this particular hack. The young hacker refused to name her targets to give them time to fix the problem before hordes of other hackers use the hack to speed up their own game play.
Source: Washington Post
