The nature of life is as you age others are born. While your soul may have been crushed by the years, new smart but foolish ones have arisen to hack what you leave unhacked.
Show me the young people that know how to work with IDA or Ghidra. The way to use tools like this without ever written assembly is way harder than the way we had 10 years ago. They found other things to hack, things where we don't know anything about.
It might seem that way but a few observations. The number of people in total hacking away is much much larger now. So the absolute numbers are probably similar or more, while in relative terms you’re probably right. But my observation with a young hacker in the house is there’s a lot of appreciation for how the machine really works amongst many kids. The high level glossy stuff doesn’t appeal as much as ripping the cover off and poking memory locations. I think this shows up in the amazing prevalence of electronics hacking these days, low power computing, etc. This is the best time to be a hacker, the tools at all levels are amazing. But real nerds like you and I are just as rare as ever, and can’t resist ripping the lids off.
The team that won Disobey’s CTF this year was very young. I don’t have a perfect eye for age, but I’d say the average age for the large group was around 20-25
Unfortunately, too many of the young ones live in Apple's "What is a computer?" world. It's hard to become curious about the boot process when POST screens have been replaced by glossy progress bars and everything is locked down.
Those young ones in a prior generation would be kicking sand in the nerds face. Not every human will be a nerd, only a tiny fraction will have the true calling. But once called, they can’t help but rip back the veil and hack.
I think AI will make every complicated process much more accessible as you can interact with a, rounds to free, teacher that can explain each piece in the appropriate level of detail for your skill level.
