My son keeps asking me about how to "hack computers" and I'm pretty sure that's what he's on about. I keep telling him about how to program. Eventually I hope it will click.
Even before programming, general IT knowledge seems to be very useful for hacking. Operating systems, hardware, and networking are great topics (and they are more concrete than most programming).
The 10-yr-old son of a friend of mine got into programming after asking me how to set up a game server. Introduced him to basic networking via the router config, explained how the internet worked and from there he got interested in how games are made. I think we all have our own stories about what compelled us to dig deeper.
