Trying to help a friend with a tween / early teen direct his teen's interest in hacking

1

I have a buddy I’ve known almost my whole life who is a hard worker, works in the sciences, decently educated, but works a lot of hours and spends a lot of time with family and family related events.

My friend has a young one that certainly has an interest in computers, but has gotten into trouble at school. I personally am VERY disabled, am single, and never been a parent, so… fingers crossed I can find some IT / computer types out there who are also parents help me pass on some advice to my friend on how to direct his young tween/early teen’s interests, so he doesn’t stifle growth and interest, but also directs that energy in a healthy direction.

I’m honestly would ideally like to see @LTS_Tom make a vid on this, but maybe he’s not interested.

A few more specifics on the kid:

He got in trouble at school for looking up how to make a “zip bomb” (and I’ll be honest, I don’t know what that is, but I’m guessing it’s malware???)

The child also wants a linux mint pc, but my friend knows nothing about linux… so that puts my friend in a difficult place.

…

I just introduced my friend to unifi products today, since he’s interested in upgrading his home network. He has google fiber I believe.

I only use unifi for switching and AP’s, w/ pfsense for firewall/gateway… so if anyone has a further recommendations on hardware, please let me know the following:

My understanding is my friend wants wifi 7 AP(s). He’d also like a unifi gateway, or is at least going to start looking into them, to move away from consumer grade stuff.

what is a good gateway that would let him connect to fiber (or via cat whatever) for 1 gig for now, who knows, maybe, maybe higher in the future… but also let him fully support max speeds of wifi 7 wireless, and maybe even a little above 1 gig inter-vlan routing if he wants to later.

I’ve just never shopped for unifi gateways, so don’t know what to tell him.

image
image1136×1163 72 KB

I’m seeing (2) 10gig SFP+ on ALL of these, meaning he could run multi-gig internet, AND in theory run multi-gig intervlan routing.

I know he’s trying to keep the overall hw somewhat simple for now (so not large numbers of switches, etc) b/c his family is mostly wifi

Any further suggestions?

2

Oh, ONE OTHER THING. My friend is interested in replacing his Ring doorbell. I told him these gateways can serve to hold (well, a single drive w/o redundancy) storage for the unifi doorbell, which also has a cam looking down for packages. If I told him anything wrong, please let me know.

3

The new Beast is the best choice right now if they have the budget and if not the Dream Machine SE would be my next pick. From their any of the UniFi Wifi 7 access points will work with that but they should also get a POE switch to power the AP.

They can also run UniFi protect on the either the Beast or the Dream Machine SE, The UniFI Doorbells work like ring but do have to be powered and are not rechargeable like the RIng Doorbells are.

1 Like
4

I would suggest Parrot Linux or OpenSUSE linux. But be aware that morals and ethics need to be strengthened since there is already a desire to build pranks and malicious payloads. Building a lab and keeping it contained within the lab would be the “correct” way to do these activities. The incorrect way often results with law enforcement knocking on the door.

Parrot Security has most/all the tools built in, but I find it easier to use on a day to day basis than something like Kali linux. In general, all the “hacking” tools can be installed on any distribution, but Kali and Parrot Security generally have many included.

1 Like
5

sounds like even the $700ish Dream Machine SE might be too rich for his blood, esp, given the additional purchases of the doorbell, poe switch, and AP. What would be the next step down in terms of gateway? And what features would he be giving up?

Thanks for helping him out.

6

I totally agree with the morals and ethics, and (believe it or not) the boy’s parents have done a LOT to instill the good values, etc. I don’t want to give the wrong impression on their parenting. I DO know people that could definately be better parents, and we’ve all seen the type.

My friend is definately one that, along with his wife, has done a lot from the beginning to ensure they do all they can to raise their kids correctly and set the kids up for the best life possible. But, kids are kids, and at some point, they are going to find a way to get in trouble (to varying degrees). Here, I think the main isssue is that the kid knows more about the linux side of things than the parents, and the parents have some catching up to do on the tech side of the “house”.

I do remember seeing, years ago when i was still watching network chuck, some ad / promo vid he did w/ some device that does arp poisioning as a means of parental controls. idk if that would help, and ofc there’s always work arounds to work arounds.

Here, I just found the jest of the video from him:

image
image669×636 86.5 KB

Now, I wouldn’t want that on my network, but idk if puting that on a vlan that is isolated to the children’s devices is a good idea.

IDK, never had to think about any of this stuff as a non-parent. just tossing ideas out there.