The latest Hack Blotter features a garden variety of cyber perps who've been investigated, apprehended, arrested, and/or convicted.
Local U.S. law enforcement agencies are devoting more resources to cybercrime in an effort to prosecute cybercriminals. Atlanta and New York are the latest cities to invest into new cybercrime units and labs.
International authorities are also stepping up arrests and convictions of hackers.
Some teenagers are learning the hard way that cybercrime doesn't pay. The Hack Blotter features the following children who've paid the price for hacking over the past few months:
Nine teenaged hackers associated with Anonymous hacktivism were arrested in Thailand.
A 17-year-old was sentenced to 12 months rehabilitation after hacking British telecom (as a 16-year-old). The hack was done with an iPhone.
Another 17-year-old was sentenced to four years in Massachusetts state custody for leading a group of villainous hackers.
A 19-year-old Australian was arrested for hacking the air traffic control system at Tullamarine Airport - which caused one plane to abort its scheduled landing.
Police arrested an 18-year old in Wales - in conjunction with the TalkTalk hack.
It was reported that a former teen Canadian hacker is serving a four-year prison sentence for hacking U.S. federal agencies.
Thirty-four suspects - many of them teenagers - were arrested in 13 countries in a massive DDoS-for-hire-scam.
Cybercurious teens ought to think about putting their tech skills to better use - such as attending a Hacker High School program.
Young people may romanticize the notion of becoming a hacker. After all, tech luminaries Bill Gates (co-founder of Microsoft), Steve Jobs (co-founder of Apple), and Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) are reformed hackers who are each worth billions of dollars. While that is true, they are also the few and far between who turned out that way.
The Phi Beta Cyber Society is a grassroots movement which aims to connect top cybersecurity leaders with high school students in the U.S. There's more honor (and money) in becoming a cyberfighter than a cybercriminal - and that's one of the messages teens will hear from the Phi Beta Cyber members.
Young people beware - there's no such thing as cyberjail, only real jail with real criminals.
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