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Why I'm teaching kids to hack computers
- rogermungo 1y agoNice.. But Damn.. Apple only : (
- sikimiki 1y agoIn the early 2000s, growing up in a third-world country with limited resources meant computers and operating systems were constantly breaking. That scarcity pushed me to tinker and experiment, I learned to troubleshoot hardware, reinstall OSes, and reverse-engineer odd behaviors. I even experimented with keyloggers out of curiosity. That practical, trial-and-error schooling is where a lot of the so called “common sense” about security comes from. It is less theory, more failing, fixing, and learning what actually keeps one safe online. I think it all stemmed from curiosity to learn and tinker. I wonder if gamifying it is enough but it’s a step.
- twostraws 1y agoI suspect gamifying it isn't enough, but as you say it's a step, and if it helps more people get involved then hopefully others can provide more steps to follow.
- zkmon 11mo agoEarly 90's were more fun. I modified DOS command.com file to change the outputs it prints, drilled holes into laptop to attach broken hinges, break electronic garbage to salvage wires and interesting things, disassemble disk drives, ...
- marak830 11mo agoHaha that reminds me, Qbasic using the help file to figure out how to program. Taking apart a HD and getting my fingers pinched between the two bloody strong magnets. Amazing what you learn when you have no other distraction xD
- twostraws 11mo agoI agree that the early 90's were a lot of fun – I remember drilling holes in 3.5-inch floppy disks to increase their capacity, blissfully unaware that actual HD floppies had a different coating entirely…
- skeeter2020 11mo agoTwo (of the many) mind-blowing discoveries of the 80's: 1. there was a disk notcher (the Nibbler?) that would DOUBLE the capacity of a 5 1/4 floppy! 2. you could just use a regular paper hole punch and a few select clips to do the same thing! All my C64 floppies had faint parallel pencil lines across the top to line up the slots and what looked like mouse-nawed holes on one side.
- cat-whisperer 11mo agoStarted modding Android ROMs at 13. That age is perfect; old enough to understand consequences, young enough to not care about breaking things. Hardware hacking tools have gotten more accessible since then. The Flipper Zero makes this easier now; 256KB RAM, open firmware, $200. Compare that to needing a full PC setup in the 2000s. Lower barrier, same curiosity-driven learning. Guided challenges vs pure exploration; both work. The structure gets more people started. The ones who stick around will break out of the sandbox anyway.
- torben-friis 11mo ago“El hambre agudiza el ingenio”, we say in Spanish. Hunger sharpens the mind. Growing up with fewer resources than others paradoxically leads to better outcomes sometimes, since you’re conscious of the barriers around you and that motivates you to overcome them. If I had grown up with the latest iPhone I would never have cared about rooting and custom ROMs, for example.
- TimByte 11mo agoThat era of breaking-and-fixing out of necessity was like the ultimate bootcamp
- Liftyee 11mo agoNeat... Brings memories of the national cybersecurity courses you were talking about. I never figured out how to do that "cat flag" terminal privilege escalation.
- twostraws 11mo agoThose cybersecurity challenges are incredible – I see kids light up when they take part, finding a passion for something they didn't even known existed previously. I don't think the teams who organize them get enough recognition for their incredible work!
- harperlee 11mo agoGame for kids, where you dedicate a third of the screen to a locked hint list and a very prominent "Buy Hint Tokens" button? Hard pass. https://www.hacktivate.app/img/framed-ipad-3.png https://www.hacktivate.app/img/framed-ipad-3.png The game industry needs to move away from milking vulnerable people with pay-to-win schemes.
- zwnow 11mo agoI've watched my grandma play a mobile game a few days ago. It has been a simple word search game. A level takes her about 2-3 minutes to beat. Every single time she beats a level, she is getting 1-2 30 second advertisements that she has to sit through. Its honestly so sad to see. Thankfully she knows that all mobile ads are bullshit and how to close them, but still... This market is shameless.
- fodmap 11mo agoRight, that's absolutely disgusting. The only reason that would be somewhat OK is if that's part of the game, and you can hack it to get tokens for free.
- notachatbot123 11mo agohttps://www.darkpattern.games/ https://www.darkpattern.games/ https://nobsgames.stavros.io/ https://nobsgames.stavros.io/
- fainpul 11mo agoAlso the game costs 20 bucks but it's offered as "Free" with "in app purchases". But you can only play one challenge until you need to buy the game. That's just false advertising. Just be upfront about it and sell the game for 20 bucks instead.
- twostraws 11mo agoI'm not sure where you got the one challenge thing from – you can play 10 challenges without needing to pay a cent. Plus, there is a dedicated version you can buy up front front without any in-app purchases, right here: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/hacktivate-education-edition/id6754342195 https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/hacktivate-education-edition/i...
- charcircuit 11mo ago>how to do SQL injection, how to use rainbow tables to figure out hashes, how to use steganography to hide data in images, and more. I feel like there are more practical and timeless topics that will still be relevant in 2040. Frameworks (abstraction) have largely solved SQL injection and bad cryptography. Personally I would avoid a cybersecurity focused corriculum and just focus on regular software engineering. Being able to think like who you are attacking and knowing the common pitfalls is most of the battle.
- twostraws 11mo agoEh… I just went to Stack Overflow and searched for "php mysql", and the first result (https://stackoverflow.com/q/79790370 https://stackoverflow.com/q/79790370) – asked 12 days ago – had SQL injection
- charcircuit 11mo agoThis is part of the long tail. I think you are underestimating the role AI is going to be playing in 2040. ChatGPT can already solve that stack overflow question and make the code use the prepared statement correctly. AI will play a pivotal role in helping with the long tail of these issues.
- twostraws 11mo agoIf it's all the same to you, I'm going to focus on inspiring people with today's technology, and hopefully help fuel their curiosity to learn about what comes in the future – whatever that may be.
- charcircuit 11mo agoYes, that is part of what my point is. To focus on today's technology rather than the technology of the 90s or 00s.
- saagarjha 11mo ago
- bonoboTP 11mo agoI don't think you can recreate this in any top-down manner no matter how well-intentioned. It has to matter to them, and what's more, it gives you extra boost if you aren't supposed to do it and no parent or teacher pats you on the shoulder, but rather your friends or people in online forums like it, or simply you like it for yourself, seeing that the computer does what you want. I learned computers by making a website for my school class, where we would put pictures from events and excursions, hosted a chat and a phpbb, designed the graphical elements in cracked warez Photoshop etc. This forced me to naturally pick up the skills. HTML, JS, burning ISO to CD, downloading things etc. Also warez games, learning about the Program Files difectory at like age 8 and how to copy the cracked exe there. Or setting up port forwarding for multi-player gaming. Or when I modded GTA (3/VC/SA) with new car models that I built in 3D modeling software based on hunting down the orthographic projection blueprints of our family car, or adding the police vehicles from my country in GTA, messing with textures etc. Or translating games from English, reverse engineering the binary file that contained the strings, I figures out that the length of each string was also there and I had to modify that too, learn about big endian and little endian, learn to work with a hex editor, understand what hex is. It was super exciting. If I had a lecture from some teacher about hex representation with some exercises at the end of the chapter for homework, I likely would have found it boring. But here I had context, I had a goal, and I had no idea what I was looking at when I opened the hex editor, I just saw that people used similar tools for translating other games and so I tried on less popular games where nobody had a specialized tool yet, it felt like making discoveries, going deep into the jungle and prevailing. Now to contradict myself, I did have a lot of fun also while solving PythonChallenge.com, even though it's artificial tasks. But at least I found it myself online and wasn't handed to me and nobody knew or cared that I was working on it. So I think this is just really hard to externally motivate if the kids don't have any desires or drive to see some effect caused by them. And maybe even I wouldn't do it in the current software and phone environment. But we also have to remember that a generation ago it was also not many people who were really into computers.
- huflungdung 11mo ago[dead]
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- agigao 11mo agoSuch a great idea and product! Thanks for all the hard work. However, please get rid of micro-transactions... I'm fine paying full price of the product for my kid, but not micro-transactions.
- bob_theslob646 11mo ago>And if you’re dead set against Apple devices, you should check out the web version of Hacktivate – it’s not as powerful or as fun, but it’s entirely web-based and free!)
- twostraws 11mo ago350+ schools are already using this, completely free, and I'm adding new schools every week!
- Msurrow 11mo agoJust FYI: The App Store has an Education Edition which is the “same app but paid up front”.
- twostraws 11mo agoThere's a separate version of the app that is a one-time purchase, with zero in-app purchases. It's available here: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/hacktivate-education-edition/id6754342195 https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/hacktivate-education-edition/i...
- mbsa7 11mo agoI have not used the app but the developer Paul Hudson was the guy who taught me Swift and UIKit when I was in college and wanted to dig into iOS development for fun. He’s truly gifted when it comes to teaching.
- twostraws 11mo agoThank you for your kind words! I've spent over a decade teaching folks to build apps, and it's something I hope I can continue doing for a long time to come.
- xandrius 11mo agoCool idea and execution but having in-app purchases to buy hints for a game targeted to kids is a big no. I get the market forces and such but I don't want to have an app subtly teach my non-existent kids to reach out to in-app purchases like that.
- twostraws 11mo agoIf you try the game and like it – if you've run through the 10 tutorial challenges and thought, "I like this and want more" – there's a separate version of the app that is an up-front, one-time purchase with no in-app purchases at all. You pay once and get everything. Get it here: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6754342195 https://apps.apple.com/app/id6754342195
- randunel 11mo agoOh, so having a separate (paid for) app makes targeting kids with in app purchases OK in the (free) app you advertise?
- twostraws 11mo agoIf I only released an up-front payment version, people would complain that they weren't able to try the app first. If I only released a free version with in-app purchases, people would complain that they don't like in-app purchases. I did both, and I'm still getting complaints. I get that my solution is imperfect, but I'm trying my best.
- wffurr 11mo agoI really appreciate you having a full unlocked copy of the game with up front pricing and trying to solve this issue in a thoughtful way. In the old days, the free version would be a limited preview of the game, and would direct users to purchase the full game. We called it a demo or shareware, as in you were intended to share and copy it widely. You could also have the “in app purchase” be the full game unlock.
- hacb 11mo agoThis is why I like the Try Hack Me platform so much. You have a lot of walkthroughs and guided challenges to get started and learn the basics; challenges get harder and harder with less and less help. You also have access to challenge write-ups even if you did not complete them, meaning that if you're stuck, instead of losing motivation, you can make progress. They embrace learning for all levels and helped me so much getting into infosec professionally.
- vhantz 11mo agoThe supposed target of this game do not at all match who can actually play it. Kids don't have Macs. Those who want to hack don't have iPhones. I would even say that a kid with an iPhone will never get the necessary curiosity about computers to want to hack anything.
- Gerard0 11mo agoI am no hacker, but for me it was exactly this which made me go What?!
- le-mark 11mo agoMy son has been highly motivated to learn about hacking in his iPad to hack some of the games they play for school (blooket and prodigy). Those are web based games, true, but fiddling with the dev console, editing the dom, and finding and pasting scripts, is not nothing.
- skeeter2020 11mo ago>> the dev console, editing the dom, and finding and pasting scripts, is not nothing. this is awesome, but way easier on a cheaper, more accessible device.
- twostraws 11mo agoI think it's fair to say that the most accessible device is the one they are already using.
- liziwizi 11mo agoi think this is a terrible assumption to make. the computer or phone a kid gets from their parents has nothing to do with their curiosity, intelligence, interests or ambitions.
- dooglius 11mo agoI was with you up until the last statement which does not seem plausible at all. Curiosity about computers is not something you are born with.
- VladVladikoff 11mo agoCool idea I was going to check it out but I don’t want to update my iPad to the latest OS for jailbreaky reasons. Any chance you could release support for something slightly before 18.5?
- twostraws 11mo agoThe app only uses one API from iOS 18 and later, so from a coding perspective I could make it support older versions easily. However, the bigger problem is testing: right now I test each release thoroughly on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, across iOS 18 and iOS 26, so adding another iOS version would require another set of devices and more time.
- hackernewscunts 11mo ago[flagged]
- TimByte 11mo agoHuge respect for not just building a tool, but building an experience that demystifies hacking in a structured, ethical, and genuinely fun way
- twostraws 11mo agoThank you! I poured a lot of time and energy into making sure challenges are unique and interesting, but also graded so folks follow a cohesive pathway, and also feel fun – it's as close to a "Hollywood-hacker" aesthetic as I could get.
- Zhyl 11mo agoWhere would this sit between Over the Wire [0] and Hacknet [1]? I would try it but I don't own anything apple. [0] https://overthewire.org/wargames/bandit/ https://overthewire.org/wargames/bandit/ [1] https://hacknet-os.com/ https://hacknet-os.com/
- Flere-Imsaho 11mo agoThere's a web version at: https://www.hacktivate.io/ https://www.hacktivate.io/ I don't believe you need Apple hardware for this. However the blog post states "it’s not as powerful or as fun, but it’s entirely web-based and free". Not sure what is meant by "not as powerful"?
- twostraws 11mo agoThe native version does quite a few extra things, including bringing all the solving tools inside the app (as opposed to using external tools like CyberChef, Boxentriq, Dcode, etc), but also has more compute-intensive operations like creating spectrograms of audio and image manipulation, a much bigger implementation of the Linux terminal, and (safely!) destructive things too – you get local copies of files or databases to work with, so you can delete them, modify them, etc, freely, rather than being restricted to working with shared resources.
- rkozik1989 11mo agoDo you also teach kids about jail time and/or being blackballed by the industry? Because no matter how well-intentioned you are I can see a 13 year old me doing the naughty thing.
- twostraws 11mo agoNo, but I like the idea – I think it might make for a good screen to add once they complete the game, saying "use your skills responsibly" and similar. Thank you!
- anti-soyboy 11mo agoguy thinks he is Mr. Robot? Hack computers jajajajaja people watched too many films
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- tristor 11mo agoNice, I am a fan of this idea and have been trying to figure out the right way to engage my niece in computers in a real way. One of my biggest concerns from seeing how it impacted my stepdaughter (now in college) is how kids are not learning how general purpose computers work and are becoming too comfortable existing entirely in restricted environments like iPads and Chromebooks. With my niece, I'm taking more active measures to ensure she learns how things actually work. I bought the full version because I'm not a fan of in-app purchases in things marketed at children, and I'll give it a playthrough myself first to make sure it fits the bill. One of the upcoming projects we're going to do together is to build a mechanical keyboard. I'm also going to build a PC with her and try to teach her the basics so she can explore mostly uninhibited on Linux.
- twostraws 11mo agoThank you! I hope you enjoy using the app together.
- werdl 11mo ago"teach kids to hack" "available for iPhone, iPad and Mac" You need to understand your market better!
- brabel 11mo agoAs an outsider, are you suggesting OP can make more sales on Android because that’s more hacker friendly? Or what exactly? From what I hear no one makes any money on apps outside the Apple ecosystem and big game platforms.
- fainpul 11mo agoOP is Paul Hudson, creator of lots of Swift / SwiftUI tutorials and other resources. https://www.hackingwithswift.com/ https://www.hackingwithswift.com/
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- ajay_as 11mo ago[dead]
- babra1 11mo ago[dead]