A new initiative to divert young people away from criminality has been launched after cyber attacks designed to block access to schools’ networks or websites more than doubled during the Covid-19 pandemic.

There was a 107 per cent increase in reports from the police cyber prevent network of students as young as nine deploying DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks from 2019 to 2020.

Many referrals into the NCCU’s Prevent team are for children of secondary school age, with the median age at 15 and the youngest at nine.

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"They took everything: our desktop computer, both our laptops, our mobile phones, a laptop I had borrowed, even old mobile phones that were lying around in drawers," said Kate.

Their children, aged five and seven, were allowed to keep their tablets.

The police later told the couple that four photos depicting category B child abuse - the second-most-serious kind - had been uploaded to an online chat site a year ago.

Information passed to the National Crime Agency suggested it had come from their IP address.

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'I’m writing this to illustrate that the best phishing attacks will look very convincing. Often people are told to watch out for poor grammar and formatting to protect against phishing. This will work in some cases, but not in cases like the one I’m about to show. Sophisticated scammers use good English and pattern-match with legitimacy.'

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