An amateur who tries to illegally gain access to a computer system using programs (scripts) that others have written. Although they may have some programming skill, script kiddies do not have the experience to write their own programs that exploit vulnerabilities. Malicious code is freely available on the Web (see
warez). Script kiddies also tend to be indiscriminate and may try to compromise any computer on the Internet they can reach. See
hacker and
cracker.