The stereotype of a hacker being antisocial man-children who live in their parents’ basements is apparently true, according to a new study from the University of Montreal.
Professor Benoit Dupont, who will present his findings next week at a criminology conference, studied police evidence on 10 hackers between 17 and 27 years old, arrested in Quebec in 2008.
According to Sunnewsnetwork, Dupont found that the hackers rarely profit from their cybercrimes and seem to do it for lols.
“Many of them are weren’t able to convert their technical competence into financial profit,” said Dupont. He has done a similar study in Canada, the United States and England, and found a similar profile.
He said that the typical hacker is male, in his 20s, and socially immature. They often have criminal records for non-digital crimes such as drug dealing and uttering threats. More than a third lived with their parents.
Dupont said that as more information was accumulated from hacker arrests, the more he found that these are characteristics that recur frequently.
Another problem for hackers who try to make cash out of their crimes is that they lack the social skills to work with people. They tend to make organisations which are dysfunctional.