‘I fell into it’: ex-criminal hackers urge Manchester pupils to use web skills for good
Cybercriminals, the shadowy online figures often depicted in Hollywood movies as hooded villains capable of wiping millions of pounds off the value of businesses at a keystroke, are not usually known for their candour.But in a sixth-form college in Manchester this week, two former hackers gave the young people gathered an honest appraisal of what living a life of internet crime really looks like.The teenagers in the room are listening intently, but the day-to-day internecine disputes they hear about is not the stuff of screenplays.“It’s just people getting into these online dramas and they’re swatting and doxing each other and getting people to throw bricks through their windows,” one of the hackers says.If the language sounds unfamiliar, it should – “swatting” and “doxing” involve people outing each other online by posting their genuine identities – but their message is clear: though cybercrime may seem alluring, the reality is anything but.
The hackers are former members of a sprawling cybercrime ecosystem dubbed “The Com”, and they’re here for a very particular reason – to urge talented teenagers to use their gaming and coding skills for the good,The talk is part of an initiative backed by the Co-op, which suffered a debilitating hack in April last year,The retailer has teamed up with The Hacking Games, a startup that identifies talented gamers to test companies’ IT systems, which wants youngsters to use their skills to help companies fight back against criminal hackers,Conor Freeman, 26, from Dublin, was jailed for just under three years in 2020 for his role in a $2m cryptocurrency theft and spoke to students at Connell Co-op College near Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium last week,Freeman became a part of the Com – short for “community” – after being groomed online by an older teenager while playing Minecraft.
The association spiralled into attending hacking forums on the dark web and eventually hacking people’s crypto wallets along with other Com members.“I stumbled on these various different dark-net hacking forums and that’s when things really started to escalate,” he says.“I just fell into these different communities, different groups, befriended a couple of different people, and then found myself involved with large-scale cryptocurrency theft.”Freeman served 11 months of his sentence and is now employed by The Hacking Games as an ethical hacker.Fergus Hay, co-founder and chief executive of The Hacking Games, said there was a “100% overlap” between gaming and hacking.
Describing gaming as a “live laboratory for skills development”, Hay said skills learned in gaming – particularly “modding” or creating software that helps you alter a video game – can be used in either hacking or cybersecurity.“And the people who’ve worked that out are the bad guys,” says Hay.He adds: “So what you’ve got is a whole generation of natural-born hackers who’ve got incredible aptitude, but they’re invisible.No one’s seen their skill sets because they aren’t advertised on LinkedIn.”Hay’s company has designed an AI-powered test to identify skills among proficient gamers who could make the jump to cybersecurity and help companies detect flaws in their IT systems via “red teaming” – or ethical hacking – where their networks are subjected to attacks by expert computer users.
Freeman was joined via video link by Ricky Handschumacher, a 30-year-old US citizen who was part of the same crypto heist and served four years in prison for the crime.The talk at Connell College was the first time Freeman and Handschumacher had ever seen each other physically.Handschumacher, who also fell into the Com via gaming, told the audience that he would have taken a different path had he known that you could be “paid a lot of money to do the right thing”.Computing students who attended the talk said they had been inspired.“The lesson is there’s great opportunities for you to go into computing, but you have to be watchful of what you’re doing because if you do something wrong, it will quickly harm your future,” said Suheil, 17.
Rob Elsey, the Co-op group’s chief digital officer, who led the organisation’s fight back against a ransomware hack that cost £120m in lost profits, said the talks were about “helping young people recognise that the digital skills they already have can be a force for good, protecting people, organisations and communities rather than being misused or exploited”.The Co-op is planning more Hacking Games talks across its 38 school academies this year.In July last year four people including three teenagers were arrested at addresses in the West Midlands, Staffordshire and London as part of an investigation into a trio of cyber-attacks on the Co-op, Marks & Spencer and Harrods.
Barclays boss ‘shocked’ by Epstein revelations; BP annual profits slump 16% – as it happened
The chief executive of Barclays has said he is “deeply dismayed and shocked” at the “depravity and the corruption” revealed in the Epstein files, as the bank deals with the fallout of its ex-boss Jes Staley’s ties to the convicted child sex offender.In his first public comments on the matter since the US Department of Justice began publishing documents related to Jeffrey Epstein in December, CS Venkatakrishnan said his thoughts went out to the victims of Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting child sex trafficking charges. He said:I’m very, very deeply dismayed and shocked by the moral depravity and the corruption that you’re reading about in the latest set of instalments. You know, my heart really goes out to victims of this scandal and these crimes.However, the Barclays boss – speaking as the bank reported annual profits – stopped short of commenting directly on allegations against his predecessor, Staley
AstraZeneca CEO hails NHS drug price deal but keeps pause on £200m UK investment
The boss of Britain’s biggest pharmaceutical company has said the government’s recent drug pricing deal is a “very positive step” but is unlikely to unfreeze a paused £200m investment in Cambridge.AstraZeneca’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, suggested that a UK-US deal on NHS pricing agreed in December would not be “sufficient” to restart the project to build a research site in the east of England, which was paused in September.Soriot, who has rebuilt the company’s drugs pipeline since 2012 and turned it into the UK’s most valuable listed business, also described the US as “the most attractive market in the world”.During Keir Starmer’s visit to Beijing two weeks ago, AstraZeneca announced $15bn (£11bn) of investments in China, its second-biggest market, and is also pouring $50bn into US factories and labs by 2030.The British drugmaker listed its shares in New York and they began trading on 2 February, but it kept its main stock listing in London
Will the Gulf’s push for its own AI succeed?
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. Today in tech, we’re discussing the Persian Gulf countries making a play for sovereignty over their own artificial intelligence in response to an unstable United States. That, and US tech giants’ plans to spend more than $600bn this year alone.I spent most of last week in Doha at the Web Summit Qatar, the Persian Gulf’s new version of the popular annual tech conference. One theme stood out among the speeches I watched and the conversations I had: sovereignty
Apple and Google pledge not to discriminate against third-party apps in UK deal
Apple and Google have committed to avoid discriminating against apps that compete with their own products under an agreement with the UK’s competition watchdog, as they avoided legally binding measures for their mobile platforms.The US tech companies have vowed to be more transparent about vetting third-party apps before letting them on their app stores and not discriminate against third-party apps in app search rankings.They have also agreed not to use data from third-party apps unfairly, such as using information about app updates to tweak their own offerings.Apple has also committed to giving app developers an easier means of requesting use of its features such as the digital wallet, and live translation for AirPod users.The commitments have been secured as part of a new regulatory regime overseen by the Competition and Markets Authority, (CMA), which has the power to impose changes on how Apple and Google operate their mobile platforms after deciding last year that they had “substantial, entrenched” market power
Winter Olympics 2026 day four: more golds for Italy, Norway and Sweden; GB curling heartache – live
This is our top 10 after two runs:It’ll take something for oner of the top two to avoid taking gold; there’s a battle for that, then a battle for bronze.Anyroad up, it’s 0-0 with 10 to go in the first; elsewhere, we’re four minutes away from the resumption of the women’s luge singles. I should say, currently Italy lead Germany by a point, so if this match is a draw they’ll finish higher and take on second place in Group A.Both teams are already into the last eight, but the winner will avoid the winner of Group A – though you’d not back either to even run USA or Canada, the two teams in contention, close.We’re under way in our Italy v Germany Group B women’s ice hockey…Goodness me
‘My needles are waiting’: Ben Ogden credits knitting habit after cross-country silver
Ben Ogden delivered the most significant result in US men’s cross-country skiing in decades on Tuesday afternoon, winning Olympic silver in the men’s sprint classic at the Milano Cortina Games to end a 50-year medal drought.The mustachioed 25-year-old finished in 3min 40.61sec after surging through the final with his trademark classical technique, less than a second behind Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, who secured the seventh Olympic gold medal of his career in 3:39.74. Klæbo’s teammate Oskar Opstad Vike took bronze after climbing from 20th in qualifying to the podium
Tell us: do you live in a Reform run council or mayoral authority?
How the Downing Street machine ensured Starmer survived to fight another day
‘Keir Starmer doesn’t do anything but U-turns’: the bleak mood in Makerfield
Labour soft left urges Starmer to reshuffle cabinet to end infighting
Starmer tells Labour MPs he is ‘not prepared to walk away’ after call for him to resign – as it happened
Keir Starmer says he is ‘not prepared to walk away’ after call for resignation