Teenagers are inherently reckless, but arguably can have lots of technical experience/knowledge by the time they're 17. If you've been messing with computers a

Teenagers are inherently reckless, but arguably can have lots of technical experience/knowledge by the time they're 17. If you've been messing with computers as a hobby and a passion since you were 11, you already have ~6 years of self directed experience, and a bunch of free time outside of school (and if you're a smart kid, inside of school too, winging classes and skipping homework). Where teens fall down is their own overconfidence / arrogance / hubris / doing things impulsively, or generally just not considering (or possibly even comprehending) the full impact or risk of stuff they are doing. Like, understanding the technical side really well, but with a severely impaired frontal lobe. So I feel it's a bit of a disservice to say it's "kids doing easy hacks". Without extra context we don't know what exploits they used or what they discovered. Could've been something easy and well known, could've discovered something novel. I think the 17yo in question was indeed arrogant and I don't agree with their politics and I think it's unfortunate they've been indoctrinated by the right wing, but I would argue that they're probably pretty technically competent and motivated and I hope later on in life it serves them well and they make a whitehat career out of it.