Tracking malicious hackers’ early activities using open source intelligence can offer substantial clues about the likelihood of their becoming a persistent threat in the future, two university researchers claimed in a report this week.

That knowledge can help guide early intervention efforts to nudge fledgling hackers off their criminal trajectories, they noted.

Christian Howell, assistant professor in the Department of Criminology at the University of South Florida, and David Maimon, a professor at Georgia State University’s Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology, recently tracked 241 new hackers engaged in website defacements for a period of one year.