Script kiddie

A Script kiddie (in leet, Skr1pt K1dd13) is a person who uses scripts and programs developed by others for the purpose of compromising computer accounts, files and launching attacks on whole computer systems (see DOS), and in general does not have the ability to write said programs on their own.

Often applied as a derogatory term for individuals who do not contribute to the development of new security-related programs, especially exploits, but rather benefit from the work of others.

see also cracker

Script kiddie scene

From around 1995 on, the widespread use of the Internet in the business and home computer field, and the full disclosure movement's policy of disclosing working exploitation tools has led to an enormous growth of the script kiddie scene.

Today, there are only rough estimations on the number of script kiddies, ranging from a couple of hundreds to up to ten thousand. Social analyses have shown that the 'average script kiddie' is around 14 to 25 years old, living in a western European country or the USA and of above-average intelligence. The driving force of script kiddies has been shown to be boredom, curiosity or 'playing war' on the Internet. There are a large number of organized script kiddie groups on the Internet. Sometimes those groups show respect to the more prominent hacking groups, but sometimes they have developed an aggressive hate against them.

The main interest of script kiddies is new exploits which are unknown to the public. Often, such exploits are leaked from research labs or given to script kiddies by insiders. They use these exploits to compromise a large number of hosts on the Internet, which can be one of the criteria used to distinguish a real blackhat hacker from a script kiddie.

History suggests that a lot of script kiddies evolve into real hackers or programmers later in life.