One very peaceful and eventless day, came a rather “not-smart” 8 year old named Uthur. This Uthur kid was very clueless and maybe even careless about online security and privacy concerns. The problem comes later as I narrate this day. This kid wakes up at 3 AM, for absolutely no reason at all, and he starts off his day by praying one hour after he wakes up. He prays as usual just like any Muslim would do. He is a quite religious kid who lives in Indonesia after all, but I can’t judge.
He waits a bit, doing random things any 8 year old would probably do. This kid is pretty ordinary. He goes downstairs as the sun rises, watches some television, and chills with his brothers. He doesn’t know what might happen on this ordinary day. It was an eventful weekend.
He then receives his breakfast, he eats and enjoys his food. “Yummy,” he says, as he thinks this day would be normal. Eats and eats. He takes a while as 8 year old kids aren’t busy, especially on a weekend where he intends to just play and have fun. Still, he doesn’t know what might just happen today.
He then gets onto his next activity which includes playing games, playing sports, and watching more television before he takes a shower. He plays his tablet. Uthur loves playing games like Roblox, Minecraft, and maybe even some Mario, Sonic, or Zelda games on the Nintendo. The kid is clueless on what sport to play, as at this time of life he isn’t too committed in any type of sport. He plays football. He plays with his brother as well. He then gets bored and goes on to basketball.
Now, this kid is tired. Clueless about what to do, he opens his tablet once again, and plays some more games. However, it’s already the afternoon. “Time flies by fast,” he thinks out loud. He then opens this very dangerous application called Discord. Now, here’s where it gets interesting, and how the conflict starts. Remember how I said he isn’t aware of security and privacy online? Well that’s when this all goes wrong. He has this friend group. Uthur puts a smile on his face and starts talking with his friends.
He talks with his friends for a while. He doesn’t seem to get tired or bored of this chat. Alas, Uthur’s tired now, he shouldn’t be! Then, out of nowhere, one of his friends starts to spam some links to this unsecure website. Now, he obviously doesn’t know that this random website is insecure and unsafe.
On discord, there is this VIP type class called “Nitro,” which can be bought or gifted. Uthur thinks he’s been gifted Nitro and clicks on the link. The link is sneaky and it seems like the real discord URL, and this website asks for his password. He is confused as he never really had to login to his account once he presses such a link. He didn’t think much of this. Uthur takes a while to remember his password. Failing a couple of times.
Fail after fail, he enters it correctly. This website asked not only for Uthur’s password, but also for his username, email, and stuff like that. I forgot to mention, but the reason it’s so convincing to Uthur, is because the login uses the same GUI as the actual discord login page. Also because this was sent by a friend from the earlier mentioned friend group who got hacked. 8 year old Uthur falls for this. Everything has been entered and sent to this Anonymous hacker.
Uthur gets confused. He gets out of the site. He then realises that he had his account spamming links without him knowing. That time he was waiting, expecting his nitro, he got HACKED!
So, he gets hacked, doesn’t know what to do, how can this day get worse? It’s gone from a perfectly fine day, to a strange afternoon, straight to a bad afternoon!
Uthur then panics. His heart beats faster than Mbappé runs. Forget Mbappé, even Usain Bolt!
Maybe even faster than an F1 car drives? Okay, not to that extent. Well, you should get the jist of it.
Now, he panics and doesn’t know what to do. What is he gonna do? Well simple, he’s a kid. So, he does what any kid would do. Run to their parents. He runs to his father. Asks what to do.
His father, calm and collected, asks him what happens. Uthur tells his father what had happened. Uthur’s gotten hacked. He tells his father how he had gotten hacked. Uthur’s friend gets hacked, hacker spams the link, Uthur clicks the spam link, puts the login info, gets hacked, hacker logs in, and so on.
His father, still calm, and collected, tells Uthur that it’s gonna be fine. Uthur, still panicking and in shock, asks him, “but, what can we do about this? The hacker’s probably already changed the password and stuff!”. Uthur is still in disbelief. His father thinks and checks his account. Has Uthur’s password gotten changed? Has he gotten banned?
Well, fortunately for this 8 year old kid, his password, and login info hasn’t been changed. Or maybe, not yet? Well, Uthur and his father acted quickly. Checking everything once again just to be sure. He still hadn’t got banned and stuff like that.
Luckily, his account is saved. Because of Uthur and his father acting quickly, he’s changed his password and email himself. So that the hacker dooesn't stay logged in. The hacker gets logged out. He then thanks God, “Alhamdulillah!” says Uthur.
Then, his next action is to check all his servers and to apologise for any friends he might’ve annoyed, and/or gotten hacked. He thanks his father. Then he goes on and continues checking his servers. Alas, he’s gotten banned from most of his servers! He and his father acted quickly but, I guess not quick enough!
Uthur then tries appealing. Server after server. He contacts the admins. He succeeds in appealing from around ⅕ of his servers that he has sadly gotten banned from. He continues trying to appeal but he’s gotten permanently banned from some servers. Of course, he is still a kid so Uthur’s father teaches him a thing or two about the internet, what to avoid, and stuff like that.
That’s the end of the day. Well, the evening has been skipped because he sleeps at 7, Uthur wouldn’t and doesn’t do much in the evening. This might be a normal experience for some, but for this kid, it’s his first. So, it’s been crazy for Uthur.
The end Author: Athar Naufalariq Henry - VII National +
