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Youth Detained for Alleged Hack into VTech Database


The Southeast Regional Organized Crime Unit of England recently declared the detention of an individual, name not publicized, because he allegedly went against the Computer Misuse Act 1990, section 2 that deals with illegal access of PC while deliberately trying to enable else commit tasks of more crimes.

The 21-year old youth reportedly violated the act in connection with committing a breach against the toymaker company VTech of Hong Kong leading to revelation of data belonging to 11.2m people comprising accounts of 4.9m adults and profiles of 6.4m children.

Cyber-security specialists suggest that the VTech problem was mainly because of lack of encryption of its database; consequently, the company was exposed to lawsuits from the people affected. As of last week, VTech's stock prices declined to less than $80 from the November 24 rate of $88.05, with the impact on sales not still known. There's no denying that destruction has occurred while that was inevitable to certain extent; nevertheless, VTech is acting rightfully to return to original state.

And with the children's personal data getting hacked, the breach becomes particularly significant. Security specialists explain that identity thieves commonly target children as the clean credit tales associated with them can be utilized for seeking government aids, setting up credit card/bank accounts or writing applications for loans.

However, in an interview to the Motherboard blog of 'Vice,' the hacker understandably responsible for the breach told he didn't intend to misuse else give away the data for monetary returns rather he wanted to attract the public's attention towards the poor security practices of VTech. He told about how he managed in hacking two databases one of parents' and another of children's private data together counting to million individuals,' utilizing an SQL-injection wherein computer attackers type in commands to initiate certain database towards giving away its contents.

According to common trend, for organizations that tighten their security defenses, hackers attack them in particular as a means of proving their skills. Therefore, it would be prudent on the part of VTech for increasing their security towards safeguarding their data storage, especially if that happens to be children's data.

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