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[snadge]

my nephew who is 14 has someone on Xbox live who says he's hacked his internet and has his IP address and could switch off his internet, sounds like kids thinking they know everything n more than adults and trying scaring tactics , annoying thing is it appears my nephew won't believe anything I say about it, that he can't strop his internet unless he has 10,000 zombie (hacked) PC's that will bombard him with DDoS attacks making his connection useless...

EDIT: he actually used the term "he said he can completely turn off my internet"...lol... so what he guna break into plusnet and turn off all their customers

he also says he rings the house fone and hacks that and charges them money and they are not allowed to answer the house phone - told him to ring his ISP

is this just kids trying to play with his head?

ive spent 2 days there and internet worked just fine no DDoS - I think he's easily led astray..i was at his age

thoughts..?

thanks

[mrk26]

Not sure how is set (and actually what it is) internet connection (modem, router etc) but I very much doubt.
I think one kid said something similar to my son about two years ago when he played famous fortnite game, then I joined lobby and asked him how he want to hack someone behind double gateway with double ddos, and turned off ping respond from internet plus dynamic ip, then I told poor kid to go back to school to learn something and don't waste my time, that was it.
These kids are not clever enough to go to shop and buy bread and milk, not to mention serious stuff like hacking.
Fill really sorry to them, and for your nephew nothing to worry about, just block these poor kids in game.

[d2d4j]

Hi

I would strongly advise you tell him to report to Xbox who will investigate and take appropriate actions (usually a ban). Xbox do record all and can look back

Do not get into any type of conversation with the other user

Many thanks

John

[kitz]

Sounds like a scare tactic to me. 
If he did has his IP address what is he going to do with it?  You leave traces of your IP all over the internet, but I thought Xbox services automatically hide your IP. 
Even if by some obscure chance he could launch a DDoS attack (which I doubt)... then if your nephew is on a dynamic IP it's so easily solved.
   
Although that said, this would not be a standard DDoS on a [web]server sat in some data-centre with a big fat internet pipe right next door.

This is a residential broadband connection which uses shared resources and shared bandwidth. To reach the EU it will have to come through the ISP's gateway, over the backhaul, through god knows how many routers and a layer 2 switch at the exchange.   If you think about it,  the amount of traffic generated by "10,000 zombie PCs" travelling down the back-haul to one particular home destination on shared bandwidth is going to attract a heck of a lot of attention elsewhere first.   
No CP/SP is going to be happy about that and will likely have something in place at the gateway before it starts congesting their back-haul to a particular destination.   They can't risk having a shed load of unhappy customers complaining their internet has ground to a halt too, so any wise ISP would surely have some form of ddos mitigation in place much higher up.

The house phone threat also sounds like total BS.   I've never heard of being able to hack someone's landline just by phoning them up??      

[jelv]

my nephew who is 14 has someone on Xbox live who says he's hacked his internet and has his IP address and could switch off his internet, i dunno if this is true or not, sounds like kids thinking they know everything n more than adults and trying scaring tactics , annoying thing is my nephew won't believe anything you say that he can't unless he has 10,000 zombie (hacked) PC's that will bombard him with DDoS attacks making his connection useless...
]he also says he rings the house fone and hacks that and charges them money and they are not allowed to answer the house phone

An admission that criminal offences have been committed! Make a report to the police?

[sevenlayermuddle]

An admission that criminal offences have been committed! Make a report to the police?

I’m not so sure.  The people involved are apparently young kids.   Do young kids deserve a criminal record, for mischief?   

As a technologically mischievous teenager of the 1970s, with a transient interest in various naughtinesses involving interference with my parents (and neighbours!) radios and TVs, I’m glad that attitudes then were different. 

Maybe one difference is, in the 1970s, such kids tended to be clever, often clever beyond comprehension of parents and teachers.   Nowadays perhaps it’s the thick ones, who are encouraged to think they’re clever by dumbed down media, that maybe cause problems?

[jelv]

We're lucky in this small town to have an excellent PCSO. A quiet informal word with him would result in him making a visit to the 'offender' sufficient to frighten them but nothing being put on record.

[d2d4j]

Hi

I do not want to scare monger but nothing I have read suggests the culprit is known to the nephew. If I am apologies in advance

We live in a wicked world so need to be careful

The best way is to use Xbox report function and let Xbox deal with it

Xbox will investigate fully, looking at all communications from the offending person coming from that particular Xbox (not just username I believe) and will take appropriate actions depending upon the findings

If Xbox needed to, they would report to correct organisations for further investigations and provide them with their evidence

Many thanks

John

[Bowdon]

This person probably has the ip address.

I mainly use a PS4 and mainly play GTA5 Online quite a lot.

Many games these days don't have a centralised server. They are too cheap to pay for that. So the online connections are directly connecting to each others consoles (not sure of the name of that network type).

I saw a video some years ago where some kids used a PC that used wireshark (? not sure if thats the name of the program, I'm sure others know of it), and used it to see all the other players in the ps4 session as they joined and left the session.

In the video they did something that managed to disconnect the ip address they were targetting. But I think all it does is knock them off the gaming session. I've had similar happen to me in the past. Like some idiot is arguing with me and next thing everyone else in the session suddenly leaves, which usually means I've left. But that's really the extent of the attack. They can't generate enough traffic constantly to keep from using your connection. I just re-join another session and thats it.

Companies need to start buying servers again instead of having everyones details susceptable.

PS.

Just looking around youtube these 'free' services that will boot someone offline are known as stressers.

It amazes me how much of a loser someone as to be to not only use one but to make it public they are using them. Seems some kids these days have no shame or self respect.

[snadge]

THANKS GUYS.. convincing him is another thing cos after every answer I gave he fired a return backing him up saying "but he knows his stuff"..

he probably watched a R.A.T video on youtube n now thinks he is Capn Crunch lol

[Alex Atkin UK]

Many games these days don't have a centralised server. They are too cheap to pay for that. So the online connections are directly connecting to each others consoles (not sure of the name of that network type).

That would be peer to peer.

Its a good idea in principle, if it keeps games online that would otherwise be too costly to maintain a server for its user base.  Sadly this is often not the case as they still need a centralised management server to establish the sessions in the first place.  So it becomes the worst of all worlds.

[adrianw]

I’m not so sure.  The people involved are apparently young kids.   Do young kids deserve a criminal record, for mischief?   

I would be delighted if all proven black hat hackers and script kiddies of any age gained a criminal record.

Report them.

[sevenlayermuddle]

I would be delighted if all proven black hat hackers and script kiddies of any age gained a criminal record.

Report them.

Any particular reason for such strong feelings?

In 40 years in the industry, I have never personally known anybody, ever, to be a victim of targeted computer hacking.  My linkedin password was once leaked, but that was a combination of incompetence by the operator, and an attack targeted at linkedin, it wasn’t targeted at me. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

Indeed, I lost my credit card details in the Boomerang Video hack (stupid having them in clear text accessible to the web, plus I hadn't been a customer in years so they rather should have deleted them) and plenty of random attempts to crack my SSH password, but never a targeted attack.

Then again, if kids believe they can just get away with it they end up doing what the Nintendo hacker did and having the book thrown at them when they are adults.  So you definitely need to scare them out of it somehow, although I agree having a permanent record seems very unfair.

I'm sure a lot of us have done things as teens we wish we hadn't and would not want a permanent record of somewhere.

[adrianw]

Any particular reason for such strong feelings?

In 40 years in the industry, I have never personally known anybody, ever, to be a victim of targeted computer hacking.  My linkedin password was once leaked, but that was a combination of incompetence by the operator, and an attack targeted at linkedin, it wasn’t targeted at me. 

I am old, crotchety, and dislike vandalism.

My firewall logs show that both my sites see a rejected break-in attempt every 30 seconds or so.

On the leakage front, try https://haveibeenpwned.com/ which reports that my email address appears in 11 collections.
Nowadays I use the Chrome Password Checkup extension and change to a unique strong password whenever I trip across yet another breached user & password combination.