https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190919125310.htm

"We know much about the scope of hacking and its threat, but the problem is that we don't know exactly when and how hacking behavior starts," said Thomas Holt, lead author and MSU cybercrime expert in the School of Criminal Justice. "There is a general understanding that hacking starts in the early teens but until now, we weren't clear on background factors, such as behavioral issues, the impact of social connections or personality traits. Our findings pointed us in the direction of thinking that there are gendered pathways to hacking."

Holt assessed responses from 50,000 teens from around the world to determine predictors of hacking. The findings, published in Crime & Delinquency, are the first to dig into gendered differences from a global data set.