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Student Suspended For Taking Teacher's Challenge
CygnusTM writes: "The Seattle Times has a story about a high-school student who has been suspended for cracking a school computer after being challenged to do so by a teacher. The teacher says he wasn't serious. Raw deal." Aaron Lutes apparently got tripped up for what should have perhaps gotten him extra credit. The article notes: "The Lutes family and the district also acknowledge that Lutes' computer-science teacher, Giovanni Colombo, told students they'd get a reward from the software company if they cracked the security system and that Colombo wanted a 10% cut of that reward." Welcome to school, take a seat.
No. That's the way it should work. Fixing bugs and gaining status from improving security is proper. Punishing folk for being able to demonstrate a security problem is improper. Perhaps vile is a better word.
... well, don't expect any plaudits from those folk. If you tell the sysadmin what the problem is and let him fix it, then you should be rewarded (at least with status). But you had better be sure that you tell him before he tracks you down, and before you have reason to know that he is tracking you down.
Someone who punishes a person for alerting them to a security problem should be fired immediately. Possibly also sued for their eyeteeth.
Doing damage is something else. And broadcasting the information about the problem is in-between (the sticky part).
If you do damage intentionally you should definitely be punished. If you do damage inadvertently, then you should possibly be punished (depends on what you do, etc.). If you broadcast the information irresponsibly... difficult. Depends. If you broadcast the information because the sysadmin (or his representative) won't hear you, and won't fix the problem
If you are responding to a challenge issued by someone that you have reason to believe is a responsible authority, then it should be a straight reward (status counts). If some specific reward is promissed, then this should be considered a contract.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I disagree false arrest is defined as "an arrest made without legal authority" He was arrested by the police because of statements made to the police that led them to probable cause that Aaron Lutes had committed a crime.
Even if the a school official placed Lutes under a citizen arrest all the facts clearly show that the arrest was lawful for the purpose that the official reasonably believed that a crime was committed by Lutes. And as long as Lutes was delivered to a police officer in compliance with Washington Law there would be no violation of the law.
Also the school has the right to order Lutes to leave or be considered trespassing. In that case the parent would have to take custody of Lutes, if a parent was not available a police officer could take custody of the juvenile due to the juvenile's lack of a guardian to be released to.
If Washington Law provides for the prosecution of persons making false police reports then that would be the proper recourse in this matter.
--
Craig Borchardt
Evil succeeds when good men stand by and do nothing.
The problem is that, while universities and colleges have the resources to shop around and look at different security packages, budgets are so much lower for high schools that they really have to make do with the crap that they get from their school boards.
This, of course, leads to a tighter security-though-obscurity focus. (Plus, realistically, what are the chances of a high school student being hired by a school board for such activity? The school boards are supposed to have people to handle these things. Those people are going to be right pissed that some upstart's taking over their job. Likewise, the amount of additional money that it'd cost in support costs, etc., to switch to a better security model typically eclipses what your average school board can afford. And yes, I realize there are quite a few that can afford them, but they prove to be more the exception than the rule.)
I was in a CS class when I was a freshman in HS(88). I was the best with computers in the class.. not saying I was smart or anything cuz the class was full of true computer idiots.
Back then, computers were still running DOS and as I can remember there was no real security on the systems. So, I told the "idiot" of the class to go log in and type "format c:".... well he did and we both get in trouble for it. I had to pay 90 bucks in restitution along with the other buy... I think I was suspended at first, but it was lifted as I can not remember my suspension. In other words, I got in trouble for basicly sharing information that anyone in the class could readily find in the class text... I did not force the guy to do it as he a senior and much bigger.. BD
Taxes and Lazy People are best friends.
I'm a sysadmin (or whatever the hell I am these days) because I love computers AND because of the money. Frankly, if I could make this much money shoveling shit somewhere, I'd take the shoveling. I wouldn't smell quite as good, but I'd have amazing musculature in my arms.
In fact, I'm also a high school dropout. Well, I took the CHSPE, so technically I have a high school diploma or equivalent. And I work for an already-public company that's making money, more or less. So I guess I'm being reasonable.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Dang, why do other students get all the bright ones? I spent a year learning computers at high school and when I arrived my teacher Java couldn't write a "Hello World" program in languages other than COBOL. (She now manages to write applets). It was kind of disappointing; I was hoping to learn something.
Interested in moving to Belgium to teach a class with about two /. reading students? ;-)
Monkey sense
in that, your boss is just someone you get paid by, and are not forced to obey, save w/ the threat that he will no longer employ you.
with teachers/students, however, children/*cough* youth *cough*, are not only told by the government to obey the teachers, but are so thouroughly indoctrinated from about 4 years old, that teachers rule is law.
and it is so. you say you don't have to obey the teacher (and this is nothing like jumping off the cliff on command), but, and this proves true all throughout the students young life-if you don't obey the teacher, you are certifiably wrong, and the teacher can seriously alter, for the worse, the next year or 2 or 5 of your life.
in other words, teachers reign in school in the eyes of the students, and they reinforce this idea knowingly, as do parents/principals/whoever else, and i know that if *i* were challenged by my teacher to do what this kid did, i'd have no reason to think it was not ok....
of course, after read this and other similar things, i know better, but before hearing of such precedents, i would not think twice before taking him/her at his/her word.
what hump?
A college degree on the other hand is not. Why finish high school when you can go on to college?
Now I know what you might be thinking, that someone can't go to college without a high school diploma, well that simply isn't true. You probably won't get into Harvard or MIT, but there are scores of well respected universities that will be more than happy to accept a "high school dropout" with high SAT scores and good scores on their GED test. Believe it or not your grades in school are less important to a college or university than your SAT scores. Do well on it and you can go to lots and lots of places with or without a HS diploma.
If you decided you wanted to go to some place like MIT, and you had the money, then a year or two at a university or even junior college will go a long way if your grades are impeccable and you can get reccomendations from your instructors.
So any way you look at it high school is a waste of time and energy, unless you're in honors/AP classes and actually maybe learning something. But if you've already left then just move on to college, even if you have to start out at a community college. If you're a hacker/geek type then chances are your test scores will be such that you'll be able to start wherever you want.
But you are right that he should not think he is going to keep making the same ammount of money he is making now forever. I was thinking the same exact thing and would have said so myself if you had not beaten me to it and done a better job of explaining the reasons why.
He should save up as much money as he can right now from that big paying job and use it to pay his tuition through school. Then when he's got a degree he can take a trip back to his old high school and put a copy of it on the principal's desk and greet him with a hearty "fuck you!"
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
their security is sad, to say the least. All they use is windows boxes with little things like remote registry access enabled. I feel sorry for people who go to that school district....
~ Detonating a nuclear device within the city limits will result in a 500 dollar fine.
when I was in highschool, the teacher dared us to crack the security software. so we did. only in our computer class, they had enough sense to fix the problem with the software instead of taking back the challenge and punishing us instead.
If you can get enough students and parents to complain about the things he is doing, he'll be out on his ass in no time. The last thing the school board wants is community involvement and if he is seen as the source of that involvement he will be eliminated ASAP.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Not really a valid analogy at all. The person who paid the hitman or the hacker in your example is just as legally responsible as the actual hitman or hacker. IANAL, but i believe that if they're caught before the incident takes place the penalty for the person who was hired would only be ranked as conspiracy to commit a felony. Cops pull sting operations where they set up an undercover policeman as a hitman for hire to catch people like that and the hirer is sent to trial despite no murder ever taking place.
In this case you have a person who told a group that they were authorized to commit an illegal act without having the actual authority to do so. Sounds like fraud to me. And while this guy will probably get away with it because he's a teacher and the kid's..well.. a kid, if you walked onto a used car lot in a cheap suit and started telling people they could have the cars if they could hot-wire them I don't think the police would accept, "But I was just kidding, I didn't think they'd really Take them!"
See Sig append. Append Sig, append. Good Sig.
The old high school I went to was a private school. They had a policy saying if you managed to break the security on the network you were to report it immediately to a admin. Also the policy was to immediately suspend the person who broke the security and to permanently revoke computer privledges. There were so many security holes I wanted to report to the school, but I knew that if I told them I would be suspended. Schools are not doing themselves any good punishing those that try to help.
The few of us in school that actually knew how to use the computers were watched closely. I couldn't do anything without a teacher standing over my shoulder. I once got in trouble by opening a telnet window to connect to my home computer. Apparently anything on the screen that looks different to the teacher is immediately dangerous.
We need to educate our teachers on how to properly teach students, not let them monitor things they don't know. Public school or private, the US education system is seriously flawed.
hehe was same here...
;-)
As soon our school hired someone to do *administrative tasks*, the first thing he did was making friends with the people from computer classes. Which resulted in a drastic decrease of network problems
The point on the whole subject is that most security setups in schools are near to worthless and teachers should be happy to have pupils who actually tel them whats wrong with the setup. I mean even the moes senior security expert can make a mistake so it's nothing to be ashamed of when someone points out to you where u have a security problem and how u can fix it. Especially not when he dared u to do it.
But sadly most often the idea of having to be better than the pupils remains in teachers had. And that is a very bad thing, especially in IT-Business. Cause it'S in the very nature of IT that whatever u learn in school (no matter how good ur teachers are) it will be to 90% out of date when u have finished school. So maybe teachers should change from teaching technical stuff to teaching methods of learning, so that they can show their pupils how they can get at the info themselves and find a learning scheme that fits most their personal needs....
It's not entrapment. It may be shitty behavior, it may even be criminal itself, but it's not entrapment. Entrapment is to entice or trick into committing a crime so as to make an arrest.
I know how you feel...
I had a teacher that, when he found out I broke into the network, he gave me an A and put me to work securing the network. I think I did a good job-anytime a student tried to access anything they weren't supposed to the PC speaker would go through a test (several frequencys all very loud echoing through the room)
On the other hand... another teacher (a couple years later) watched as I proved the network was insecure... I did this out in the open mind you. After almost getting expelled, I threatened a lawsuit and the entire punishment was dropped.
bah.. I think all he's learned is that children have no rights and will never be treated fairly in our society.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I have a civics teacher who goes to the beach almost every day after school, gets drunk and "parties" on the weekends, and is rumored to have at one time sold weed to students, who makes 75-80k a year. He's in his fifties and so has a good deal of seniority, but even for the younger teachers the money is probably not bad.
So I guess the school system doesn't differentiate between the "smart" teachers and the others, but just because someone is "smart" doesn't mean he/she deserves more money than anyone else. Sure, your supreme intelligence and superiority as a person won't be indicated by your job title, but it is not a bad career.
I'm 23 years old. If someone asked me to see whether I could get through their trivial little network security program I would not think twice about it. If a lecturer at my university asked me to check their network security, I would do it. And if an admin showed up and started screaming and yelling and saying he was gunna call the cops both me and the lecturer would tell him to piss off. But that didn't happen here.. why? Because he's a 17 year old kid and he has no rights and is shown no respect.
How we know is more important than what we know.
You read slashdot and you have never heard of P and NP? P and NP are two sets of problems. P is the set of problems that can be solved in time that is a polynomial function of their size. NP (Non-Deterministic Polynomial) is the set of problems, whose solution can be verified in polynomial time, but the only we can currently find actual solution runs in exponential time. Computer scientists still don't know if P=NP, in which case basically many hard problems would become easy to solve. It is generally considered that P!=NP, but if someone proves P=NP I'm sure he/she will get a Turing award the same year and probably ve on the cover of Time magazine.
but in this situation it is highly unlikely that the seminar is filed with kids. If you were to successfully disable the alarm of the bank and then get in trouble for it you could always call forward a dozen other people from the seminar and have them testify that they believed you had the ok of a representative of the bank. What's more, they could stand there and demand that the reward be paid. But in this situation the classroom is full of kids and our society doesnt give kids the same rights as adults. So when the victim here calls forward a dozen of his school mates and says the teacher said it was ok, he and his class mates are ignored or assumed to be lying. Especially if the teacher disagrees with them. This is a simple case of age descrimination.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I can picture that they wanted to prove themselves to thier teacher who obviously underestimated his class. Students often go to enormous lengths to impress thier teachers and they can surprise you with what they are able to accomplish. Congrats for pulling it off and doing it in a respectable way. They should be encouraging other kids to be like this instead of getting on him for pointing out thier problems. It is very emberassing that adults are capable of this behavior.
If I don't lock up my gun and someone steals it and uses it to kill someone, I AM AT FAULT. Should be the same with computers.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I was in a similar situation a while back. While working on the terminal of our proprietary system at my job I accidentally found a backdoor that gave me access to a shell. I notified the Sysadmin, a good friend of mine, immediately. He told me mess around with the backdoor and see how far I could get with it. He wanted me to test the severity of the exploit before he reported it to the vendor. I ended up getting quite far and giving myself access to manager's functions. I told the sysadmin of my success and he thanked me for my help. I left it at that. It is a military system on the base LAN so I had no desire to use the system for personal gain. It would have been suicide to do so.
So time went on and one day our Lieutentant was playing around with the system and saw my profile was setup with manager access. He changed it back to it's proper access levels and told me "it's taken care of". Later that day the facility manager returned. She is an older lady of the sort that fears technology, change, and progress. He told her of my actions and she went through the roof. She documented my actions as though I had committed a crime. She contacted my Commander and tried to get me demoted. I was in quite a bit of trouble.
I was fired and moved to a different facility (This is common practice in the military). I was put on a bad shift with a notoriously gruff supervisor. Life sucked.
My only revenge is the knowledge that when the time came to write my annual performance review, I ensured that the incident was documented as a positive occurrence. The review notes that my actions increased the overall security of the proprietary system. Due to the nature of the information the system contained, this is quite significant.
Isn't it sad what closed-minded people can do when they refuse open their eyes to new ideas?
i once knew a kid who could lose his completed[!] homework on the bus to school.
he shows up for math class that day, and since this was not the first time he showed up without the required assignment the teacher told him, "if you are not going to do the work in this class don't bother coming at all..."
so the next day the kid shows up at the vice principal's office rather than the math class and when asked why he is not in class, he relates what the teacher told him!
of course he got suspended for 3 days, yet he did the right thing IMO by showing up at school rather than playing hooky.
don't tell children to do things you really don't want them to do, their sense of irony or sarcasm may not be as finely developed as an adults'...
"...can you imagine a BEOWULF CLUSTER of these? That'd be some serious power!"
Don't they have any projects going on the side that they could Shanghai a talented young coder into helping them out with?
Since when does "Cracker" == "Coder"? I'm sorry, but with the proliferation of script kiddies and packet monkeys and all the other 1337 h4}{0rs, I'd say it's very unlikely "Cracker" will also mean "Coder" these days. Educating a young adult is a worthwhile endeavor, but please, let's educate them in something worthwhile, not how to crack systems.
Wow, ususally you have to wait 'til grad school to get a teacher that sleazy.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
Did he get the money? :)
Seriously, though, that's absolutely ridiculous in a lot of ways. However it was pretty silly of the kid to not see this coming; if the teacher told you that MasterLock would give him a reward if he could break into the Principal's office and he did it one night I'm sure the same thing would've happened.
-- atomly
yet another good method for teachers to get students they don't like to leave school, isn't it? Psycho terror, bad grades and now that ...
... it was running windows.
The kid assumed that the teacher had the authority to grant permission, and that he didn't need to ask permission of anyone else. If the teacher were responsible, when the student got in trouble the teacher would come to the student's defense, saying it's my fault, I told him to do it. That's what most teachers would have done, or at least most of the teachers I've known. This teacher needs to be disciplined, maybe not for making the joke that got misinterpreted, but for not taking responsibility for it.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
GOD DAMN. If they pulled that shit at my kids school I would be knocking on people's doors bearing gifts and organising picket lines. When I was in school the students aranged the strike because they were going to close down grade 12 (the final year) because they didn't have enough students.. we were in our final year so it didn't even effect us but we knew that it would be bad for the school - kids would have to go to some other school to get their final certificate. We protested for days and recruited the teachers to protest with us (after all, they had no-one to teach). In the end it was called off. You can't let this stuff slide man.. you gotta get in there and change things.
How we know is more important than what we know.
not end of story. If the salesman was talking to a kid on the lot and the next person to walk on the lot was his father and the son told the father about what the guy said the guy would say "shut up kid" and the father would probably say "billy, don't tell lies". If the person in the next booth was a kid and he called the cops the cops wouldn't even show up. The point here? We don't give kids any rights or respect in our society -- especially when they are in school.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I remember my chemistry teacher used to teach us stuff that was pure speculation but I didn't find out until I started reading Science regularly. I would find something that was a brand new discovery.. ie someone had finally proved it and I'd go to the teacher and he'd say "oh yer.. but I knew it was correct". Apparently teachers do this a lot.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I never said it was entrapment. I said it was the same principle as entrapment. The teacher enticed the kids into doing something and then had the kid who actually did it arrested for it. So now you're arguing with my definition of entrapment, whereas earlier you were attacking my logic in concluding that the same principle was involved in this case as in an entrapment case. You're not making much sense to me. I think we're done here.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I totally agree with you analogy. It is exactly like giving something to someone then calling it theft. Heads should roll. The first should be the teacher who laid down the challenge, the next should be whoever decided to suspend the student.
Dumb teachers exist too. I left my computer to go get a drink and left a "Your PC is Stoned; don't touch the keyboard" or similar message in the first cell of a spreadsheet in Lotus 1-2-3 in the hope that nobody would pinch the computer while I was gone. When I returned the teacher was staring with utter fear at my computer telling me not to touch it.. And I'm there for 10 minutes trying to explain that if it has the Lotus menu along the top line, then it is still running 1-2-3, and that there really IS no evil virus. Argh. I think the best teacher I had was the one who asked me and my friend NOT to go to her classes, because she was sick of us picking up her mistakes (DOS batch files, eeks).
--
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Well, this is a wonderful example of a 'stick your head in the sand and the problem will go away' post if ever I saw one.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Yes, I agree that was my sarcastic side, I actually spend every friday, seeing how I can tweaking my OpenBSD and Debian Distros.. Other than that I go see movies with our 2600 meeting, and try to pick chicks up with the "hey, ever see someone that can decipher 16 bit encryption in his head?" Usually my date is Palmala and her 5 Friends
"Now, if a school has just paid out thousands of dollars for this program and a student can easily break thru it, don't you think they would want to know this? Why wouldn't they challenge the students to do this so they could probably go back to the company and say "Look, your software sucks, we want our money back"
This is exactly why they WONT blame the software. Undoutably some slick marketer conned the school (and taxpayers) out of thousands for this so-called "security" program (as if some third party program will allow idiots secure a system better than a competently installed and administered server).
Why won't they blame the teacher? Why the teacher has a UNION... They will either have to file charges, or defend themselves in some court.
It's far easier to punish the student. Minors basically have no rights, and schools can punish students pretty much at will.
Basically the school's administration drones took the easy way out. And the easy way is NEVER the right way. The only harm this kid caused was to expose wasteful spending by a PUBLIC institution.
I hope this case gets a lot of bad publicity for this school, and these administrator types get theirs.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
If you give someone permission to pick the lock on your house you have to assume they will be sucessful. Even if they enter your house for a moment to prove their sucess, they have your permission to gain access. When he stated that it was contractual and he is under obligation to live up to his part of the contract, giving them permission to try and crack the machines. The thing I don't like about it is the fact that it does sound vaguely like the the undercover cop going "yeah, dealing drugs is great" and suckering the guy into selling crack then busting him for it. There are laws against entrappment, but I am not sure wheter they apply to law enforcement only, or what their scope is. But on to flaming the teacher. He was a moron for asking a group of CHILDERN to try to crack his system. There are a lot of childern who konw more about computers at that school than he does I bet. The pace tech goes at these days Mostly young people of the world are keeping up at even a decent pace. He should have also realized there was a good chance for his comment to be taken literally. He was also a fool to let his ego get to him. People like him give teachers a bad name.
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
Teachers should realize that when there is a bright kid in the class, they should be given responsibility and challenges. I was lucky enough to get it that way all through school, but it seems it's an exception rather than a rule.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Wow, then you are the few and the proud, my sys admin is really dull, although cool, he lets me test security out and basicly gives me free reign over our small network, although It strikes me odd that I have my certs for novell (novell/nt network) and he cant even get his A+....
hehe movies are just about 30% the rest is devoted to my imagination and fasination with computers...
Plaintext. Who woulda thunk it...
I play Nerd-Folk!
hell, i'd show up with an ak-74 and a dozen magazines loaded with alternating tracer and ap/incendiary and start in the admin section and work my way to the it department, that'll teach 'em to dis' me like dat!
then i'd tell the cops someone on a site called 'slashdot' run by a guy called 'tacoboy' or 'cowboy veal' or something like dat tole me to do it!
then i'd hire johnnie cochrane and call jesse and al sharpton... =8^-)
"...can you imagine a BEOWULF CLUSTER of these? That'd be some serious power!"
PS. I don't generally call myself a hacker, but I aspire to the title. Call me a wannabe if you like.
I can honostly say that last year in my computer class I knew more than the computer techer. He would always have me do all of his work like installing hardware and always working on his software problems. Then he accused me at looking at chicks in bikinis but he had no proof but they went ahead and kicked me out of the class anyway. Well after this computer incident I have had a teacher refuse to help me on my school work and and one teacher get up in my face and yell at me about it. Oh and get this my dad and I went in for the second appeal and the superintendant had a tape recorder in the middle of the table and my dad asked if we could get a copy of it he said yea and then he called back today and said he lost it. Whats up with that? I just got one thing to say for the teacher "If he knew anything about computers and was serious about his security HE WOULDNT BE USING WINDOWS" Oh he also changed his story 3 times wich none of the papers put that in there if anyone has any questions or anything heres my email address motocrosssuperstar@hotmail.com
Isn't it also contributing to the delinquency of a minor if they are under the age of 18? If so the teacher then the teacher is guilty.
According to the article, the student was taken to a police station and threatened with criminal charges for his actions.
There's no "we" in team, only "me"
well my CS program is in the Engineering school so I've done plenty of EE. so I'm very familar with both also and I still say it depends. I know plenty of people who were EE with CS concentration and had to go to straight EE cause they couldn't handle CS. once again depends on the program. our CS is fairly tough.
I have a feeling he wasn't saying Psych, but Physical... as in Physical education / Physical taining / Highschool gym teacher Those who can do, those who can't teach, and those who can't teach seem to gravitate towards me.
I always fail to realize, why people keep whining about their time in school. High school life teaches you so much more than the stuff in class. That's the place you spend most of your time in, where your values are shaped, and where you have some of the most important experiences in your youth and argueably your life. High school is not so much about getting a good education in order to get big bucks later on, but about mastering your life.
Imagine, dropping out of high school at 14/15, always hanging around with the same old people and doing sysadmin all day long, being held accountable for every poop on the network, cause you earn a six figures salary. I'd rather not.
BTW, I got my high school diploma (German Abitur) two years ago and now I'm going to college, doing part time sysadmin. I don't get a six figures salary though. Whatever.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Duh.
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-- Slashdot sucks.
First, I am not 17 years old. I'm now 28, and have ten solid years experience working on UNIX systems. I am able to command the salary I do because I have a reputation for fixing problems that no one else could, and fixing them quickly. This is more valuable to my employer (a major network-services-provider) than a BS ever will be. This ability comes from years of careful study of how computers work.
As for a lack of education: I am currently working on bachelors, in philosophy (although I'm trying to transfer to a school that offers classics) with an eye towards "cashing out" of the computer industry and going into ministry.
Now, those who say that the purpose of education is not to make money are, in general, correct. The point of education is to learn how to think and to have something to think with (i.e. information), ultimately applying that to the human condition. However, most technical programs are more like vocational training than education. So, when I decline to pursue a CS degree (even though I could get one by a couple of years of yawning with my background) I do so because that degree is worthless to me.
Frankly, at my current level (very senior in one of the biggest companies around) my education or lack thereof is irrelevant in the face of my experience and the things people have seen me do. After spending years in school being told how "drop outs don't succeed", I take a certain satisfaction in the fact that I have slags of people with BS's and even MS's in computer science coming to me for advice and even assistance.
Is this pride, and thereby a sin? I can't deny it. I should probably be working on that.
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-- Slashdot sucks.
Hey, This guy needs to get his classmates to back him up. The teacher called in the cops.. hell he challenged him. He should sue for defamation of character, and some other typical crap. Possibly his college would be covered. This kid did nothing wrong. And he was promised a cash prize, which he should get, I bet he's got a legal case.
You go for any senior IT job here in the UK at a major company, and they want an honours degree from a decent university.
Worse than that, a lot of them are expecting science degree as a minimum, and some are even starting to demand a Computer Science degree.
I don't like this, I don't necessarily agree with it, but I have noticed the trend. And yes, I will be pissed if I ever miss out on a job because my degree is in Accounting and not CS.
~Cederic
You can have one (and only one) of the following lines on your resume. Pick one:
- "I screwed my school by driving them nuts"
- "I started a web programming firm"
The difference between these two is non-trivial.
Letting yourself get caught up in the system (i.e. public education) is a great way to waste time. Take a step back and recognize that the opinions of your educators are insignificant and that you should do what will be best for yourself in the long run (e.g. not completing school, barely getting by to finish that high school diploma), not "showing them who's smartest by getting straight A's".
i wonder where colombo will be working next year?
Cracking is in no way wrong, under the following conditions:
1) Attempts to break security are done out of inquiry, not for misciveous or malicious purposes.
2) All activities do not disrupt the system or compromise data and/or resources to such a degree as to have negative effects on other users and/or legitimate system operation
3) All results that are discovered are disclosed publicly for the common good and knowledge of the community
Desires for cracking, reverse engineering, and general questioning of authority should be instilled in the back of everyone's mind at a young age and never forgotten. By constantly checking how things work and keeping the public aware of possible problems it prevents real issues from surfacing (and it prevents issues from being known only to a few persons privately.)
As for the argument that the mere act of intrusion can cause harm, even if there was no malicous intent, see statement #2 above... i'm sorry if i offend a bunch of people who until this point in my post agreed with me - but if you don't know what you're doing as you probe a system and you foul things up, you shouldn't have been there in the first place.
If a user pokes around, exposes security flaws, doesn't break anything, and then tells others publicly after he's left the system... that, to me, is one of the most honnorable and valuable activities in which a user can endeavor.
That's just my opinion... i could be wrong. (And I'd welcome emails telling me i |am or I am not correct.)
a wonderful thought... too bad i doubt we'd ever see such a verdict.
=[ Question Authority ]=
This is the same thing as having lil Billy tell lil Sam that Sam can borrow Billy's parents car. Then Sam getting pissed off that he's in jail for grand theft. I'm not saying it's correct to punish people for authorized activity -- but if you do something that is not authorized by the proper person, it is against the law. Now, teachers are not the final say in what can and cannot happen in class. Just because a teacher says the sky is purple doesn't make it so, and likewise, if a teacher says go crack this security system and you do it the admins have every right to get pissed at you.
If some specific reward is promissed, then this should be considered a contract. Under state law (in most US states) you cannot bind into a legal contract under the age of 18. Therefore he could have promised him the moon, the students actions were his own; as no legal establishment was there. The worst that would happen is conspiracy to commit a crime, and possibly coercion on the adults part.
And, alerting them to a security problem is one thing but actually exploiting it is another. Saying, "Yes there is a hole" is much different then going "Let me show you the hole" -- granted, the end result is that there is a security hole -- but the variation is what happens to the messenger. It goes into the lack of accountability and responsibility people have for their own actions; everyone is so quick to blame other people without looking at themselves.
If you are not told by an authorized (not someone you think is authorized, ignorance is not bliss) it's ok to do something, it is wrong. Don't piss and moan because you were too infantile to actually check with someone who was in a position to authorize it.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
If you're good, they don't care.
Trust me on this.
Only HR departments care about degrees because they have to weed out the "good from the bad".
If you're going through the HR department, you're not good enough yet.
-Stu
Engineering degree: "How does it work?"
Accounting degree: "How much will it cost?"
Management degree: "When will this work?"
Liberal Arts: "Do you want fries with that?"
Seriously, the group of college grads with the lowest entry standardized test scores in the U.S. are education majors.
Ever wonder why teachers' unions are so afraid of allowing other majors to teach and so opposed to merit pay? Teachers have a well-justified subconscious belief in their own intellectual inferiority.
The true signs of a proto-hacker are:
I don't know where those morons got their material for Hackers, but all the Real Hackers I know (e.g. people who munch on protocol analysis and machine code for a living) aren't yuppie hipster wannabes. Get a clue. *plonk*
Rev. Dr. Xenophon Fenderson, the Carbon(d)ated, KSC, DEATH, SubGenius, mhm21x16
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
Wait a minute?! If you're telling me that the teacher should be blamed than you got it wrong. Why you ask?!
Well, if my boss or anyone else, tells me to jump off the 10th floor window and I took the dive without "looking into it" than it is my own doing and no one but "I" to be held responsible for the consequence.
However, if I was dumb and was tricked into it, than it's a different story. With this teacher/student story, I don't think the student is dumb -- otherwise s/he wouldn't figured out how to hack the system.
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
Maybe for computer engineers, but where I went most Mechies went to geo-science next.
Bite the hand.
The moral of the story: schools are the most oppresive organizations out there. I mean, hell, you can't even carry a gun or drugs into them! 8^)
Actually I thought the problem was, people DO carry guns and drugs in and don't get caught, but if you do something antisocial like wear black or question authority, you're in eleven kinds of trouble.
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
maybe he is due the money from the school system.
??????
Are you nuts? The school system does NOT owe the kid money any more than the mysterious "security company" does. So sad.
-------
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Unfortunatly, it is rare that a "smart" teacher gets paid better than a "dumb" one. Fact of the matter is, while teaching is very rewarding, the pay is not enough to attract the people that should be there. That's why I work in IT and not the first grade.
That and I can't spell to save my life.
Indeed common sense should apply, but to the teacher, not the student. These are kids we are talking about, and the people that are supposed to be their role models. I'm not suggesting that all highschool kids are mindless sheep, but I am suggesting that teachers have a huge responsibility to kids, to lead them, teach them, and mentor them, quite apart from giving them academic direction. As a parent, I'm also not suggesting that parents assume the role of parents - or usurp it, I should say - as our government, and many parents, seem to want. I am, however, saying that this sort of casual attitude towards kids is not something we should blame on the kids. Yeah, the kid did something stupid, and he should be disciplined for it. But the teacher who encouraged the student to break the law should not be simply forgiven with such a lame excuse as "well I didn't really mean it." Kids are impressionable, and a teacher's entire career is about creating the right impressions on those kids. This sort of thing is inexcusable.
Apache guy, Open Source enthusiast, runner
I agree with your sentiment. However, a teacher's certificate doesn't teach you how to be a teacher. From family and friends who are teachers, being certified means you took classes to make Johnny feel good about himself. Why not try home schooling?
this sig....forget it, nobody cares.
You misspelled "possessive".
(Incorrect Grammar During Dictionary Flame, -3)
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
You can't break into my house because I installed a new lock which can NOT be opened without the key
And the kid leaned over and turned the handel. It seems he forgot to lock the lock.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
I forget the first application they tried to use. Think it was Full Armor. We found out that through the Anti-Virus scheduler, we could make our way to MSCONFIG and set 'Advanced Properties' for the task. Well, in this case we were able to just tick off a few checkboxes in the init files and Full Armor was no more.
Second they tried Fortres. This was pretty fun. Basically I wrote some basic boot floppies (I even made it menu based. you could temporarily disabled Fortres or permanently). Then they disabled booting from A and setting a password.
Then it got interesting. Some (idiots) would open it up and flash the BIOS. They asked for the trouble they got into. I gave up after this point, but someone did get around it and then they cracked down.
All this to prevent students from moving icons and changing the desktop theme.
-----
Its a joke lol. I was proposed with similar challenges in highschool, most of them involving by-passing censoring software for browsing the internet, getting pass the firewall from the outside to get into the main database(where transcripts are), and gaining internet access back in classrooms where the school crippled the network. Schools fail to understand or properly educate faculty in what computers are and what can be done with them. Instead of punishing this kid, they should have hired him on as a security consultant, and they should have fired the teacher for being inept. They just don't get it.
___________
I don't care what it looks like, it WORKS doesn't it!?!
I thought it was:
Engr-->CompSi-->InfoSys-->Marketing-->Liberal Arts
--
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Windows doesn't have passwords, just a cancel button.
Bite the hand.
I think the kid should not only have the suspension lifted, I also think the teacher should pay the kid the reward that he was promised. It was never said how much the "reward" was, just that the teacher wanted 10% (conspiracy to commit a crime, anyone? It would certainly be fair, especially if the kid was facing punishment for breaking the law). The teacher could give him ninety cents, and say the reward was a dollar, less his 10%. And he gets screwed twice by the same teacher. Isn't education wonderful?
Was it a windows 98 or NT 4. Maybe it was a 3.1 box which would take no cracking at all. Also could it have been a Fortruse 101 which which is one of the easiest ones to crack. That would be a good thing to figure out.
Umm... you could work at McDonald's and make more than a high school teacher makes.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Jinx (see post above) - seems ironic that your handle is "parity"...
I don't mean teachers challenging kids to crack school computers--I mean teachers being just plain stupid.
In this nation we continually lament the low pay of teachers. This, to me, is an insult to my intelligence.
(Full Disclosure: I live in a college town and our local university is "known" for it's ed school)
Teachers, in general, are stupid. At least 50% of my H.S. teachers (some with Masters Degrees) didn't know their subject. In fact, I had math teachers teach us WRONG math that was corrected by student investigation...not once, not twice, but weekly. I had teachers make baseless claims of fact about historical events and school policy. Many teachers were ready to lower their gauntlet of authority in violation of law, policy, and decency. Long time vetrans (30+ yrs) were given near total discretion over their own behavior. When this behavior was reported it was swept under the rug....why you ask? The WEA/NEA--The Teacher's Union. That's right. For those of you still living under a rock, the Unions determine local school policy. Don't believe me? You should see their PAC funding and lobbying budgets. Teachers can't be fired.
Case in point: A local teacher was removed from a Junior High School science position because he was repeatedly accused of sexually harrassing the young ladies in his class. The solution? Make him a H.S. girls P.E. teacher (where he is allowed extensive discretion when mandating a class dress code).
This is pretty ranty, and anecdotal, so you can write it off as blathering. You can even pick it apart. The truth value, however, is not determined by the eloquence of the bearer of that truth. (The efficacy of the communication most certainly is...but that goes without saying).
Teachers like this convince me ever more that Home Schooling is a much better educational solution than public schools. Oh...I'll still pay for everybody else's kids to go to those sad institutions of LCD learning, but I won't be caught dead putting my kids through that needless torture.
Oh...and teachers? I'll support higher wages when you decide that earning them, instead of picketing for them, is the way to get them.
-fp
hehe. Me too. 6 figure income without a high school diploma -- gotta love it. This really just underlines the utter unimportance of what education has become.
Congrats, at the age of 45 you will be doing the exact same thing and making the same salary. If that's what you want, more power to ya.
-josh
words cannot properly convey my anger over shitheaded stupidity like this.
Well, if my boss or anyone else, tells me to jump off the 10th floor window and I took the dive without "looking into it" than it is my own doing and no one but "I" to be held responsible for the consequence.
Taking a flying leap off the 10th floor has no discernable benefit besides being a Darwin Awards footnote. The teacher, on the other hand, is acknowledged to have said the software company was offering a reward. Not only that, but Lutes wasn't the only student to take him seriously, according to the superintendent. Completely different situation here; looks like the teacher didn't realize how much power his words carry among his students, and one of them got burned as a result. I'm rather disappointed the teacher (as far as I know) hasn't come out and stood up, publicly, for his student.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
OK. When I was in Highschool some years ago my teacher freely admited that some us were more capable than she was. She never would have made a dare like that even in jest because kids being kids will do things if given the idea to do them.
If you give them the idea that they could get praise for doing something, even if it is a false idea. They will go ahead and do it.
Secondly. laypeople are so inundated with the hype of hackers taking over the digital world that they over react when ever there is even the hint of somebody cracking into a system. the kid simply did what kids do, and did nothing wrong. The school and the teacher on the other hand are severly at fault for giving their children the wrong ideas and then punishing them for being smarter than they are.
haha, thats the exact opposite of my school. most of the teachers fight tooth and claw to STOP us from being able to get around thier "security". Hell, they even threatened to suspend me one day when i turned on the comp and it went into its BIOS. But there are a few good teachers there, such as my electronics teacher, who is PAYING me to remove the security software off the computers in his room.
Is education all about gaining income?
What if you were poor when you were a child...and never had access to a computer until coming to school. So do you think you would be a young sysadmin then?
Education may be unimportant to the extreme few who are lucky enough to be smart, talented, motivated and provided with advantages from birth (smart parents who provide for their kids, access to computers, books, musical instruments, etc.).
For the other 6 billion, education is and will always be utterly essential.
"Chill, Orrin!"---Trent Lott
Ten bucks says we've just seen the subject of JonKatz's next book
. . . and perhaps even a majority of the content between the covers.
--
Rob Carlson
All of this bs results from people unwilling to take the heat and responsibility for their actions.
The teacher needs to admit that he was wrong even if he thought it was a joke at the time. Teachers are supposed to Know that some students will try to trip them up at any opportunity. Sounds like this Colombo guy Was serious, but that might become immaterial in a court of law. He is responsible for what he said, but won't own up to it, saying it's silly.
The father should counsel his son to appeal the process fairly and if necessary, take the suspension and learn from it. This line:
>>>"My son had lots of plans for living the good life (from the reward money)," said Aaron Lutes' father, Mike. "I can see an adult questioning what the teacher said, but not a bunch of 15-year-old kids."
points to a real problem some parents have: the inability to raise their children with a sense of responsibility. Plus it implies that there is a damage lawsuit in the offing. Great, that'll teach the kid a lesson.
And lawyers who are indirectly responsible for this rush to put spin on everything for fear of lawsuits, rather than approaching the whole issue rationally and with maturity, need to die. hehheh, j/k.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
Please please please Get It In Writing. Like a post above mentions, it's for your own protection.
I'm not saying the teacher is going to drop you in it, but it is a sensible step. Get signatures and witnesses, give a copy to your parents, friends, etc. People who will stand up for you if you're shat upon.
I agree the kid done right, but to all intents and purposes he was being decieved. So... follow the hacker ethic, and use your head :-)
You forgot one rung: Engr-->CompSi-->InfoSys-->Marketing-->Liberal Arts-->Communications
People see the world as they are, not as it is.
We call that "bribery," actually. Or perhaps soliciting criminal activity.
Entrapment is generally reserved for law enforcement or their informants.
"When it rains, it pours." --Morton's Salt
Or, perhaps I'm being idealistic. I know it would have been (and was) that way in my high school. But, then, St. Xavier (Cincinnati, OH) is a very different kind of school. Now that I'm thinking about it more, I have this feeling in my gut that he's going to be lumped (As seemingly everyone else is) with the trenchcoat mafia.
*sigh*
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
I used to teach highschool computer science, and I always set up the tests and exams with a "practical" (on-computer) and a "theoretical" (paper-based) component. One year, one of the practical choices was to write a program to brute-force the password for the LANtastic server we had. Most students hadn't a clue how to do that so they picked a different practical question to work on, but I was glad that at least one was willing to try (Hi Cory!).
I vaguely recall that he was clueful enough at that point in his life to be able to set up the nested loops correctly (not a trivial concept for *most* students), but the hardware we were working on was so slooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwww that it didn't have time to grind through and get the password.
As far as the class went, the administration really didn't have much interest in what we were up to, which was good. I had the students actually write simple video games as part of the coursework. Heck-- we even networked them using NetBIOS!
Ah, Turbo C, DOS 6.2, 640K, 16 MHZ 386SX CPU's.....
-Roy
A year or so ago, I used to visit this message board that allowed user ids to have underscores. There was a big discussion one time about metal detectors.
One person said they wouldn't work that well, so the another guy (his user id was 'evil_genius') dared him to try to get a gun through a metal detector.
Of course, the guy got the gun through a metal detector, and got arrested. Since 'evil_genius' was stupid enough to suggest this, I feel like all people with underscores in their names are also this stupid.
The above was total bs, just like the original post.
--
Well, I will say that it makes me proud that I am doing extremely well on my own, without "the system" or the help of "the system", despite claims by my teachers and other advocates of "the system" that there is no path outside the walls of academia. I appreciate your post and your view, and I suppose it's a bit easy and wrong to target teachers as proponents of a system I don't like. So I won't target them individually, just rather as a whole; and I think it is fair statement to say the large majority of teachers I have met are incompetant and irresponsible. Such is public education. (Although I'm an admittedly biased opponent of formal education. Damn longhairs.)
# wrote sig.txt, 23 lines, 31337 chars
The order goes:
Engr --> CSc --> Poli Sci --> Physc
Yikes...
I have an engineering degree with a Poli Sci minor, and I did grad work in Comp. Sci...
I'm not ever sure where on that chart I am...
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
I guess I'll share my high school experience.
In Junior High, I upstaged the idiots who sold the school computers, the school recognized me, and I became the preferred person to contact when things went bad, or were not performing as quickly as expected. I was free and knew better what I was doing than the adults who they paid. Then I went on to high school, and one day started fixing problems with their network, by the time someone came by, the printers were printing faster,
several systems that weren't working were, and things were in good shape. The library person thought things were broken because the printers were printing things faster than they "are supposed to". After this, the principal called me in, and made me tell him that I would never touch a school computer again, not so much as touch it.
After about half an hour of me trying to explain to them, and they not listening, I did agree. At the end of that year I went to another high-school, one with a SunOS network and a PC network, and they made me an administrator there, a refreshing change from previous school, and those sun4/260s were so awesome too, so things went well. Then I went to college and now here I am, being paid to run a particular companys ultra boxes. I had hoped that public schools might have improved over the years, but I guess they have not. As far as computers go, high schools have some of the biggest idiots I have ever seen. Of course the same is true for most smaller government associations I have had to work with...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
He also was hauled off to the Elma police station and held briefly for investigation of unauthorized use of a computer to access government information.
Wait? Wasn't the charge based on using a computer to acccess "government information"? Which would mean, you know, accessing a file? Something ain't matching up here kids, and it doesn't look like Aaron's the bad guy here...
The Lutes family and the district also acknowledge that Lutes' computer-science teacher, Giovanni Colombo, told students they'd get a reward from the software company if they cracked the security system and that Colombo wanted a 10 percent cut of that reward.
So it's agreed; the teacher went out and said the software company was offering a reward for cracking the software. The teacher lied to his students for yuks. Great teacher.
"But the teacher was only joking!"
About what part? The phony "reward" or the "10% cut"? I joke about getting a cut of others' work all the time.
Elma School Supt. Bill Myhr, duly noting that the issue was confidential, did say that while some students took the challenge seriously, it wasn't intended that way.
So Aaron wasn't the only kid who thought the teacher was serious? So one can't argue that Aaron claiming his teacher was serious is just an excuse; he wasn't the only one confused by the teacher's statements.
So far, it looks like Aaron's only crime was being too good with computers for the adults' liking.
He did acknowledge that Aaron Lutes was disciplined last year for using a school computer to call up inappropriate Web sites.
Probably 2600, attrition.org, Peacefire and the like. Nice use of ambiguous terminology to besmirch Aaron's character. In large legal cases, this is called "leaking selected information to the media," and is considered a rather sleazy P.R. tactic.
Really, it looks like Aaron's being persecuted for making the teacher, the school, and the district look like fools for using such an easily-circumvented "security system." The kid does what the teacher is known to have said to the students, expects the reward the teacher claimed was being offered, and instead gets punished for being too smart. The ol' bait-and-switch; wasn't this used on Winston in 1984? Root out the undesirables by offering exactly what they want, then turn and stab them in the back?
I think Aaron Lutes has learned more from this experience than any high school could teach in four years.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
This guy got in trouble for something stupid. At least you have a teacher that will say something like this. Ours school seems to put down computers as much as it can. This year we got a new principal. This guy brings in teachers for token jobs, like history teachers, oh it just so happens the guy is a great basketball coach. Our principal apparently thinks very very little about any club except for the sports ones. Niether the computer club, nor the dramam club got any funding this year. Over the summer the new guy decided the school need some "cleaning". His idea of cleaning was throwing away over $20,000 worth of computer equiptment, the stuff we had been collecting for 3 years, that groups before me had been collecting since the school opened 10 years ago. He threw away _everything_, including an SGI Indy we had just gotten last year. He also cleaned out the drama department, which i'm not all that involved in, but he threw away all of thier props. The dramam department actually made money for the school, we used to have 6 plays a year, we're going to have 2 this year due to lack of funds and props. The drama club tried to raise money by selling candy, he put a stop to that saying it violated school policy. As if all this wasn't bad enough, we got ANOTHER gym, bringing us to a total of 3 gyms, basketball courts indoors and out. Ok, i'm done ranting
Didn't know how to spell his occupation correctly.
I know a guy that did this with calculus...
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
That's what you get when you work for a contract on a project, and don't have paperwork to back it up! Next time get it in writing. Especially for security work.
And he's hardly the first youngster to get royally screwed this way by his teacher! It's only rare because it happened in High School and not College.
-Ben
Kinda same thing happened to me back in highschool, a friend of mine got his email account suspended on the old network we had, and I jokingly told him I'd have him back on in a couple days. The teacher overheard me and told me he'd like to see me try.
I found out he didn't really like to see me succeed, though.
I fear this is true. :)
/. trolls, really.
Wait, I *do* care about
# wrote sig.txt, 23 lines, 31337 chars
Kind of happened to me about 3 yrs ago.. we had some dum hacker types at our college.. they basically peaked at running key loggers.
:(
:) )
:)
I was very keen (and still am) on computers and spent all my time writing an internal mailing system as the admins had disabled all the usual mailing routines for our network..
Whilst checking out the dir i kept my prog in (which was on a unsecure drive so that anyone could use it to send mail..) i found one of these keylog files in it masquerading as one of my data files
Next thing i know im being carried down the hall.. limited to the use of just 1 pc out of the whole college (and only if i am supervised) then made to sign some legal document about the data protections act (im in the uk.. but you looked at the URL of my home page and new that already didnt you
As for education.. it all sucks imho.. the computing course i did at college was superb and i find it amusing that in the 2 years it lasted, it went into more detail about the same topics that the Degree course i am doing at the moment does. (hello reading uni.. you suck) It does mean i get an easy ride tho
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Ok... so what has not been said yet? The article comments that the parents have been told that all criminal charges will be dropped - so just what are these other aspects? I think until that not-so-subtle issue is cleared, I can't say anything about the student's actions. I will say, however, that the teacher definitely sounds like a moron - the article made no attempt to hide that.
so there you have our take - take it or ignore it
Hi! This is the Sig, blatantly attached to the end of this comment.
A junior walks into a library filled with older computers running DOS based menus.
The librarian tries to convince him that these machines are secure.
Its funny, it only took me about the time elapsed on a reboot to gain access to the dos prompt and then the network.
Our librarians have their MCSE
MunITioN
MunITioN
"A mind is a terrible thing to lose"
It's more a testimony to how idiotic the "enforcement" side of school has become (6-year olds expelled for kissing, etc.).
Way back in about (*cough* *cough), my junior high had a PDP-11 (so I spit on the waffles of you NT youngsters). Was used for accounting, and admin. decided to teach a computer programming class...by the end of it half of us thirteen-year-olds knew more about the thing than anyone. Some of us were asked to help run it, some of us kept trying to crack it.
One of us punks starting collecting passwords with a login spoofer, etc, had a list of all accounting passwords, everything else really.
And when he was caught basically got a "don't do that again" lecture and was asked to show how he did it. Shades of Oliver Wendell Jones...
But of course, these days we have to start following the smart ones early...
you can start off poor and still have more intelligence than somebody who starts off rich. you can't have more computer though.
Nope.
Honors Phys/Math->Engr->Csc->Bus->Poli Sci->Psych->Phil
How many angels have you counted today? Did you notice which ones were dancing?
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
For some subjects, such as computer science, exceptions to this requirements can be made in most school districts, due to the desperate need for qualified instructors.
That is why many of the best and brightest in their fields do not become teachers.
The most obvious reason that the "best and brightest" do not become teachers in their field is the difference in compensation between technical and educational specialists. A previous poster noted that as a highschool dropout sysadmin, he was making more money than any of his former teachers. What's the solution for this sad state of affairs?
Unless you have my degree, in which case it's:
...which is always a useful skill to have, even if it does annoy the hell out of everyone else...
"What do they really mean when they say
Why does it work?
How does it work?
How much will it cost?
When will this work?"
Tee hee...
Interrobang,
MA, LPW ('Applied Rhetoric')
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
At least at my school, the following system applies:
First, there are the head and the teachers. Then there's nothing. Then God. Then nothing times 300. Then maybe a little lower there are the students.
What does this mean? The teachers are always right and it's not possible that they could commit a crime (since they are the law).
If you don't like it, leave.
Since they don't get more money if they would do something for their students, they don't do it.
I'm happy that most of my teachers don't like the system either and give us some freedom back, but they don't have to. If you complain about something too much, they'll revert to teaching-by-law.
This is the exact same story from my junior high. Two friends and I got into the Novell networks, got caught 'cause we didn't really care about it and used our real names to see how long it took them to find us. Well, 8 months later, they finally did, threatened us with some felonies, and told us that we might possibility to *gasp* _TEACH_ a TYPING class! Oh no! Then they just forgot about it, apparently.
A very similar thing happened to sone of my friends. I go to a HS with a computer academy. The network has about 120-150 computers on it and so there are several admins to keep them working properly. He was one, and contributed to the academy considerably. He wrote a script that checked every drive on the academy network for various files the school deemed inapproprate like mp3s, and for files that might be, like zips and rars, and logged them to a file. And one weekend he ran l0pht to see how password security was. He started it from a school computer friday afternoon, locked the computer (we use nt4) and let it run. On monday he got the teacher, unlocked the computer and showed him all the cracked passwords. And he was promptly kicked out of all his academy classes. And he was banned from even being in the academy building, no lunch with friends unless they wanted to go sit outside. So anyhow don't trust the school system at all. They do nothing but shaft the smart kids. I'm the valedictorian of my school and I think so far all the reward ive gotten is a few t-shirts that are too small (I'm 6'3) and a few free pizza lunches. The football players wander the halls and get hotels and beer at away games, with SCHOOL MONEY no less. I can't even go into the teachers lounge to use a clean bathroom with toilet paper, or to buy a soda for 50 cents instead of a dollar. Don't trust the school to be in any way honorable, it would surprise me if they didn't punish the kid more for challenging them.
Might be good living now ... but when the economy heads south, my BS is gonna look alot better then your nothing
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
That's still no excuse.
Hell, I knew teachers that would get high with their students - does this mean that if the student is caught smoking up in the bathroom he shouldn't be punished?
Laws are laws, even stupid ones.
Don't blame others for your choices, regardless of who "dares you" to do what.
Why is it people are so afraid to take responsibility for their actions.
Of course, for irony I should have posted anonymously...huh
My eigth grade year in middle school, I was in a computer class where we did stuff with Hypercard. I did the normal assignments and used the rest of the time to program stuff that was more interesting. Because I had figured out some simple ways to bypass the security, the computer lab teacher was deathly afraid of me.
Some kind of rumor got started that I was working on a disk that could be inserted into any of the school computers and would then bring the entire district network down. The first I heard of it was when I was summoned to talk to the principal (and all the administrators who had also gathered in the office specifically to discipline me). My computer priveleges were revoked for a month because they didn't want to "take chances".
-------
Vidi, Vici, Veni
...they show me exactly who i need to hire when i get into a position where i can do some hiring. seriously, you get a kid who obviously has some skills and took some initiative. i think that it is clear that the teacher is at fault. if he has been working with HS people for long, he should have known that issuing such a challenge, even in jest, would be met with a response.
hmmm...
Seriously, did anyone else notice the progression of less intelligent people in college?
They'd start out in Mech E or EE, then drop to Industrial E when Mech E or EE was too hard, then drop to business when Engineering was too hard, then end up in Nutrition or Education.
Heh, that's funny! My progression was very similar, only I ended up in Computer Science!
No. No, there would not be. This is neither logical nor feasible What you're saying is tantamount to suggesting that a crime is the fault of the victim. If we adopt this stance in relation to one type of crime, then it could be extended over time to every sort of crime. The foundation of justice systems, since the beginning of recorded law, has been laying the fault for the crime with the criminal. We can't turn around now and start saying "it's your fault i hacked/cracked/whatever-ed your box- you didn't have tight enough security." That is ludicrous. It is the fault of the criminal who gains illegal and unauthorized access to a resource, not the person who fails to control sufficiently that resource.
Following in your logic, we would soon reach the point of "it's your fault i shot you... i was just firing my gun around at random, and you stepped in front of my bullets. and you weren't wearing bulletproof armor. i'm not to blame." I can't stress this enough... crime is, and always will be, solely the fault of the criminal parties.
What you're saying is essentially that computer crime should not be a crime if the box is not secure enough. Essentially, you seem to think that if the crime is too easy, it shouldn't be a crime. That's absurd. Think about what you are saying. Read some law. Apply the laws of logic. Then rethink your opinion. Just because there is a new paradigm doesn't mean we have to change the basic laws of justice and morality. Humans are still the same... the basic codes of justic that human society has been following for millenia will be too.
--Use this space for notes--
Um...breaking into a computer with permission isn't in fact 'wrong', and it's not even illegal. There are hundreds of companies that can be hired to do things exactly like that.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
What was that about an F'in professor? Had lots of those back when I was in school!
Teen Angel - a Ghost Story
We can't take that troll seriously. If he's so smart, let's see him spell psych correctly for a change.
I do not have a signature
The media will report exactly how bad something is. They didn't report exactly anything beyond a stand-alone PC and filter software. If he'd cracked the education board's network, we'd have read that.
----------------------
This story really brings back some memories of my first couple years of high school. When we weren't being challenged in our programming classes we really had nothing else to do but to try to bypass the system so we could play games.
The security software they had installed on the computer systems was incredibly easy to bypass. My advice to high school network administrators where any of the machines are macs (these were the machines in the programming lab so they were the once we put the most effort into, the PCs were even easier, it took 5 clicks from the standard student user interface to be in Windows Explorer and have complete control) is as follows:
Netware is so easy to get around on PCs its not even worth bothering.
The point of this all is that there is always going to be a group of kids on any high school network who are trying to do this stuff. They aren't trying to do it to get access to files they shouldn't have access to. If we wanted to we could have done that, but we didn't. We just wanted to beat the system to beat the system. Eventually we grew out of it and ended up helping the network administrator keep things clean.
At one time I was suspended for 5 days for related incidents, and it really didn't stop me from doing anything. It's not the answer. Let the kids beat the system, make it better. Let it evolve.
_______________________________________________
All circuits busy.
Dang, why do other teachers get all the bright ones? I spent a year teaching computers at a middle school and when I arrived none of them could write a web page or "Hello World". (A few of them could by the end of the year). It was kind of disappointing; I was hoping for an apprentice jedi or two.
Heh, maybe if you'd finished school you wouldn't be an ill-tempered badger now.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
It's just like the South Park movie -- where the parents protested the vulgarity of a movie about parents protesting the vulgarity of a movie -- except I don't think Parker & Stone intended it.
One thing is for sure, though. Aaron Lutes just learned a lot more from his Computer class than he bargained for, about how people who have skills and knowledge are feared and persecuted by those who don't.
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." --Albert Einstein
I was told when I was 5 that "he told me to do it" excuses didn't work.
The story says the kid was in trouble last year for bringing up innapropriate web sites. I'm trying to paint a MO here, just a theory..
/..'rs should do the same. I had teachers fuck with me because I was too smart in school. It's nothing but peasant mentality on the part of the school district. Then again, I've been to washington, back in the 80's when I listened to the cure and dressed funny, I remember kids from my cousins HS in their farmer overalls asking me, "What are you some kind of faggot?" I guess things haven't changed much.
A few years back Mr Columbo recomends site blocking software A. Kid breaks through software. Mr Columbo looks like an ass because some 14 year old kid comprimised his recomended security. Rather than be a professional about it and say "gee ok maybe I should ask this kid what we should use" He probably spent his time thinkin of ways to get back at him.
Over the course of the next year, Mr Columbo does his best to alienate this kid from the rest of the population. Prolly embarasses him in front of the class, continually tries to opress his free though.
Eventually the kid gets to a state where no matter what he tries, he knows Mr Columbo (god i love saying that) does not like him, he wants to do good in school so he's willing to do whatever it takes to get back in his good graces.
Mr Columbo makes a joke, telling the students to crack the file security system. Kid is so desperate to get on his good side he takes it literally, so he begins his work.
After comprimising system, kid goes back to Mr Columbo hoping he will acknowledge his work. Mr Columbo acknowledges it, then turns around and reports to the school "hey this kid is a 3v1l h4ck3r" to get the kid who made him look bad a year ago out of his hair.
The whole thing smells like entrapment if you ask me. Just like the corporate world except if a job is this bad, at least you can quit.
I'm willing to donate $100 bucks to this kids legal defense fund. It's not much, but its all I can offer right now. Let me know where to send the check, maybe the rest of us
--Toq
I find the best way to deal with school is to completely ignore your surroundings, including your teachers, and instead teach yourself as much as you possibly can about computers. If you have the intelligence necessary to be a hacker, you'll pick up tidbits in class, do well on exams and tests, and pull average marks. As an added bonus, you won't get into these situations! Of course, I'm assuming that most hackers are like me (i.e. they prefer to teach themselves rather than be taught).
--Skatche; the name with no meaning whatsoever
"If you're going through hell, keep going."
Winston Churchill
now this kid spent the time to try to "crack" the system but he didn't take 2 seconds to verify the contest by possibly going to their website.
Why the fuck do you brag so much? Just because you got hooked up with a high income job doesn't mean that you should rub it into the faces of all you see. I guess money does corrupt.
your education doesn't matter after you get your first job.
Instead of complaining about how stupid teachers are, why don't you do the children a favor, get a teacher's certificate and become one of the "smart" teachers.
Many states require a Bachelors in Education to be certified as a teacher; thus, a Bachelors in a specific field is not sufficient for teaching that field. So, to become part of the solution, one would have to find the time and money to complete another Bachelors, get a teaching certificate, and find a job. That is why many of the best and brightest in their fields do not become teachers.
At least get your GED, then take a class in some community college. If you have even one coll class, it doesnt matter if you have a hs diploma or not. Of course, it would be good to actually get a degree... but you dont see too interested in going anywhere else. I know several people that dropped out of hs to start college, and most of them were a little smarter than the avg monkey. Many of them are still in college, but think of the time they saved. :)
I was never caught because I never did anything stupid when in hs, but I had a bad habit of taking reports from other students directories, reformatting and adding a few comments of my own in several classes. Saved lots of time and allowed me to play "hunt the wumpus" during class.
The article states: "Aaron Lutes was disciplined last year for using a school computer to call up inappropriate Web sites"
He was probably viewing CowboyNeal's pr0n page.
If shoppers shop, and buyers buy, what do customers do?
"I can see an adult questioning what the teacher said, but not a bunch of 15-year-old kids."
I think we can give 15 year olds a bit more credit than this. At least all of the 15-year olds I know.
There was an open challenge issued by Colombo, who is someone in authority. Lutes took the challenge, then, after the fact Colombo sez 'Just kidding'. If a cop comes to you, and says 'I need you to give me a hand loading these drugs into our evidence van, and as soon as you pick up a bundle, they arrest you for possession, it's called entrapment. The cop gets in trouble, you go free, and in America, you sue the police department, city, state, and federal governments for $415 million dollars for mental anguish, and missing Oprah on TV that afternoon. Then you move to Hawaii where you start raising llamas until a freak sandalwood accident leaves you permanently limping and scratching your privates in public, until one day, lonely and raw, you decide to marry a trophy wife who then turns out to be the ex wife of an Asian Triad member named Yago who hunts you down, and makes you listen to reruns of Korrie's Clothier commercials until finally your brain packs it in, and dribbles out your open mouth. Is that what you want? Is it?
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Linux r00lz.
Thank you.
I think he said something more in line with "I never let my schooling interfere with my education."
Anyway, school is a pretty important part of education. I was an outcast myself in school, and it taught me to appreciate the things that were really important. That is, not tailoring myself to make others happy, but to conduct myself in a way that made me happy (I was a dirty little punk rocker in HS =).
Actually, it's more like the teacher said "I dare you to break into my house" and then calls the cops. If you dare someone to commit a real crime (ie breaking into someone else's house) and they do it, they're still guilty of a crime. You're just guilty of conspiracy on top of it.
Bite the hand.
I don't have a highschool diploma, but I am less than a semester away from a B.S. in psychology, (While holding a fulltime job as a security administrator for A Big Telco).
I wouldn't trade college for the world. True, I could learn just as much about Anthropology, Sociology, and human nature from a library, for free, but that wouldn't have exposed me to the many viewpoints of others (and I still feel that those that miss the opportunity to interact with several thousand of their peers face to face will probably never be as good at interacting with the people that do). Another thing college has done for me is gotten me to learn things I never would have done on my own.
All of this coupled with the fact I've been paying for it myself while working a real life job and paying real life bills have resulted in producing a much more well rounded and capable individual (IMHO).
Sure, you can get tech jobs right out of high school, or even before, but even if that persists (which it most likely won't, pointy headed bosses like pieces of paper), who would you hire, applicant #1, who has little in the way of deadline experience, and knows little save tech knowledge, or applicant #2, who has a certificate that proves he (or she) can deal will bullsh!t (college diploma) and has all of the same tech skills, plus more.
Who would you rather work with? Who would you be more likely to invite out for a beer?
I'm not saying you are lesser for not continuing your education, but I am saying you are selling yourself short, and if you are as smart as you think you are, you should be able to work and go to school too.
semantics are everything!
That's quite a broad generalization there. I would have to disagree.
:)
1. Some people teach because they have to (that's all they know, or they can't get a job better than that).
2. Some people teach because they love to.
Obviously, you're going to run into some teachers in the first category who hate their job, hate the students, and might even hate life too. If you combine that with frustrated students, you're only asking for trouble. Unfortunately there are all to many teachers who fall into this category, and they are probably responsible for where the public school system is today.
The teachers in the second category are really the ones that CAN make school how it should be: EDUCATIONAL. Still though, if you have a teacher in the second category and a student who makes that teacher's job a hassle to him/her, you're still asking for trouble. This should be solved with the teacher realizing that they're just kids, and you've got to brush most annoyances off.
So there you have it. Often times, yes, the teachers are the problem, but not all the time. You've got to remember that an adult interacting with a group of teens going through puberty (or kids at any age) has got to be incredibly hard no matter what you're doing...
So, give them some credit
The law you're looking for is "contributing to the delinquency of a minor". The teacher induced a minor to break a law by claiming there was a reward for taking the action. That's a serious offense, especially for a teacher.
There's no "we" in team, only "me"
True. You forgot to add that the person has no concept of personal responsibility. It's always someone elses fault, it seems.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
The real problem here is ignorance ... LEA's are ignorant, teachers, administrators ... They are afraid -- when people challenge their beliefs, it brings their plastic fantastic world to a halt, they're insecure and scared, in order to put their world back into perspetive, they have to criminilize the messenger instead of the institutions that are lying to them ...
That all said, I am a little suspiscious about how he could break in to whatever it was he was supposd to have broken into ... the article has no details at all about the software, the computer, the attack etc ... I doubt with the level of sophistication the school seems to demonstrate, they could tell a misconfiuration from a compromise.
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Perhaps a better analogy would be a bank. A bank holds money and valuables for its depositors. If the owner of a bank set the safe combination to 0-0-0 and walked out the fron door on Friday afternoon leaving the alarm off and front door unlocked, they would probably be held responsible for whatever happened due to their negligence. If someone did the same with their own safe in their own house, not much would happen to them as they were not entrusted with other people's things.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
I did not see the teacher quoted in the article, but he certainly should be saying something more like "um I was kidding, but I did suggest that the kid hack in" and take responsibility for his own actions. It really is absurd that the school administration has chosen such an immature stance as to say "just kidding!". Fine example for the kids. Who needs accountability when you can distract and manipulate?
cat
What if you were poor when you were a child...and never had access to a computer until coming to school. So do you think you would be a young sysadmin then?
That's why it's a million times more important for teachers to ENCOURAGE students to learn about computers, rather than punish them for it. Those school lab computers may well be the only computers some of those kids get to touch - and the philosophy is exactly like, stay in the lines, use only these eight crayons, and if I catch you drawing on the back of the paper, you go home for 3 days.
This is ridiculous. Usually, a generation tends to want its kids to have it better than they did. So why are we stuck dealing with a couple of generations that are SCARED TO DEATH whenever we demonstrate that we know more than they do - and thus have a chance to have it better than they did? When did schools decide it was their job to keep kids dumb instead of make them smart?
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
from the never-trust-anyone-over-30-inches
That is why she like me, I am just under 24" long.
werd.
Okay, smoke some more crack please. There usually are no good signs of a 'hacker' from the outside. What you have described my friend is a script kiddie.
Usually the hackers are the kids who are never out with friends on a Friday or Saturday night because they are locked up in their room with a case of Dr. Pepper, trying to figure out how to make their computer do X thing that is wasn't designed to do.
Quite frankly I've I came across the person your describing I'd probably laugh at him.
Oh and BTW, 2600 has really been a valid hacker resource in quite a while...More than anything its become a large soapbox...
It's irrelevant. The teacher claimed the security company would pay. The teacher had no legal authority to enter into a contract on the company's behalf, verbal or otherwise. The teacher may have provided false information, but there is nothing the teacher said which would incur any monetary liability on his part.
-Vercingetorix
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
5 days off of high school sounds like a great reward to me.....
Need a Catering Connection
The old saying goes:
'When you flunk out of Calculus, you enroll in Journalism School.'
Hay thar.
Even with the testimony of the teacher and teacher's aide, who confirmed I was performing a responsible security audit
I applaud the teachers for sticking up for you. I think the school district was out of line for suspending you for two days.
(and I'm making more money now as a 17 year old Sysadmin than any of my teachers ever have or will).
As a teacher, I've got to take issue with what I perceive to be the tone of this statement. Forgive me if it's not what you intended.
Did you ever have a teacher who you admired and thought that they could do be in any profession that they wanted to? There are teachers in this world who choose to teach because they love doing it. There are not many teachers who are doing it for the money. There are other benefits of being a teacher. I don't know a lot of jobs outside of academia which provide such vacation time, for instance. I, for one, get a thrill out of teaching Computer Science to students and watching their skills grow from nothing into marketable skills that they will use for the rest of their lives. I can't personally place a monetary value on that.
The tone of your message seemed to imply that you are in some way better than teachers simply because you make more money. Please realize that for a lot of teachers, it's not about the money, and so your comment really doesn't make any sense at all.
It was predictable that at least one of the students would take up the challenge. In fact, a good teacher who knows his students moderately well ought to be able to guess which ones might. But more importantly, what does this retribution teach all of the students there? He accepted a challenge that was openly given. When he succeeded, he annouced his success. And he was punished. Will the next student to do this quietly prowl around the system and say nothing? And is there anyone in most schools with the knowledge to discover that the system has been compromised?
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
This is like walking through an open door with a sign reading "Come on in -- We're OPEN". And then getting arrested for shoplifting [even though you didn't take anything]. Generally a waste of effort. We did stuff like that at my high school. One admin was too dumb to care; the other liked Linux, so he just laughed at Windows! Excellent
My other car is first.
As a Geek, the student should have recognized the name Giovanni and known not to be so trusting.
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Is it any real surprise that Giovanni wanted a cut? "It was tribute, just like in the old days..."
(Moderators, I have +1 and didn't use it. Consider this post already modded down.)
The real Threed's
--Threed
The only place I looked was on the head of a pin and there were too many dancing there for me to count.
--
that would explain the crappy level of journalism the article displayed.
You can never garauntee that a 15 year old is mature enough to pock up the nuances of adult humor, or sarcasm
Some 15yolds are surprisingly good at picking up on this sort of thing.
My opinion: the teacher was making it up on the spot, on the assumption that there was NO WAY to defeat the security - or that no one would take up the offer.
Even so, this is a dangerous spot for a teacher to stand. It's the equivalent of: There's a tennis racket stuck in the rafters of the gym or some other exceptionally cavernous room, the teacher knows there's absolutely no way anyone can get up there and get it. A cocky student brags that he can in fact go get it. So the teacher - with poker face - dares him to do so. And that night, the student attempts this, without anyone's knowledge, and either a) succeeds, or b) fails and is injured, take your pick, the point is made either way. Can the teacher get out of hot water (for encouraging this dangerous stunt) instantly by saying "I was just kidding"?
School's just like the military. Drill sergeants and teachers alike can bust your ass for stuff THEY did, just because they don't feel like admitting they're not perfect.
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
If the teacher asked the students to commit a crime, could it not be conspiracy?
Maybe not conspiracy, but certainly contributing to delinquency of a minor.
There's no "we" in team, only "me"
I had a funny experience from the old HS days. I had written a mandelbrot program in BASIC and was in our HS library. We had a few 286's and so I started to run the program and test out the speed. Well of course one of the halfwit librarians happened to see the screen with these malicious pixels and forced me to reboot the computer. I was detained in the library until they were satisfied that I had not destroyed the computer. It still amazes me that schools supposedly devoted to education can do such a good job at making sure you don't learn anything. Later
-------------------------------------------------
"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind."
Interesting word: owe. The teacher, and by extension, the school system may be liable for any damage done by the student since the teacher is in a position of authority over the student. If the teacher told the students that a reward would be paid, he might be held accountable for such a claim. If the reward was substantial and this issue made it to court, it could be argued that the student earned the reward and his teacher (or the school system) must pay.
First of all, lets drag that teacher in to slashdot court and whoop his candy ass.
And then, have him apologise to the whole school including the kid, and have the school take the kid back with apologies ofcourse.
After which, the stupid Netnanny software should either fix their software (if it was an unknown bug - low probability) or send the school an update with the new fixes.
After which the kid should be commended for taking up the challenge, and should be educated by Emmanuel Goldstein and Kevin Mitnick to know when to begin and when to stop.
Rapid Nirvana
The company "said" that it was unaware. Why didn't they said that there was no award? The company did not deny the award offer.Why not?
Fight Spammers!
I'm one credit away from an MS in Comp Sci. Why can't I find anywhere that will even offer a salary like that?
Constitutionally Correct
Congrats, at the age of 45 you will be doing the exact same thing and making the same salary. If that's what you want, more power to ya.
How is that different from any other career that DOES require formal "I played their game for 16 years" completion certificates?
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
I think there is more to this then we're allowing. Many of us have raised Cain about the fact that we "leave our rights at the door" when we (as students) enter a public school. This is because the school takes on the role of the guardian from the moment the student walks in the door to the moment the student gets home. While certain legal parentheticals exist in this, thereby creating minor exceptions to this rule (corporal punishment for example) the vast majority of the schools authority derives from this basic assumption
The teacher is an employee of the school and the school system. His role is also that of a guardian. While there are examples of teachers smoking up with their students and numerous other breaches of protocol within nations schools, these are pretty universaly reguarded as a "Bad Thing"(tm).
All in all, the teacher does assume responcibility for the control he has over his students and for the instructions he gives to his students. High School students are (for the most part) under the age of 18. Consequently we do not expect them to have as sophisticated a sence of right and wrong as we expect from adults. Hence we try them as minors, not adults, in a court of law. The same applies here, the teacher does, to a certain degree, set down the moral standards. This is doubly so in a moral question as complicated as computer security (we all agree that murder is, no pun intended, pretty cut and dry?).
Lastly, we must take into account the legalities of the entire question. Did the student do any damage? No. Did the student access any files he was not supposed to read or in any way breach confidentiality? No. Is legal action being pressed against the student? Not as far as we know. All that's happened is the kid is suspended. In short, the school is enforcing its rules and regulations on a student. However, the student was told, by a representitive of the school, that his actions were within the scope of his course and were not condemned by the school.
How is this different than a store owner saying "Oh, you can have that, its free" and then calling the cops as soon as you walk out the door with it, accusing you of shoplifting?
Bottom line, the teacher screwed up. His actions were totaly unprofessional and demonstrate a real lack of forthought. He should be fired immediately. The student's suspension should be revoked without further delay, and the school should issue a formal appology, both to the student and the student body as a whole.
When the system values itself above the needs and rights of those it serves it is corrupt and earns the distrust and contempt of its masters.
Yea my spelling is wretched. Deal with it.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
'sounds to me like you may still have some learning to do.
Yes, it's great to be smug about how much money you're making, but did you ever stop to consider that you're really not worth that? I mean, "to society". Your inflated wage is a product of market dynamics, skilled computer workers are in short supply, so basically, if a person can turn on a computer, they can have a job. The supply of people who are skilled such as you (and I'm not disputing your skill/talent/intelligence - whatever), is much smaller than the demand.
This is the same exact reason why the RIAA can charge 20 fucking bucks for a CD that costs 50 cents to manufacture. (only they artificially constrain the supply). Perhaps the supply of skilled workers is somewhat artificially constrained (although I'm a vocal opponent of increasing H1-B visas). But in that analogy, that makes you no better as a net admin than n*sync is as musicians.
If the market changes, without a HS diploma, you are well and truly fucked. Supply does seem to be guaranteed to be short, even with the corporate lapdog congress increasing H1-B caps - but you don't know for a fact that *demand* is going to stay high.
There is a buttload of EXPERIENCED sysadmins out there, with decades of Unix experience, engineering degrees, etc. Right now, you're taking advantage of a system that permits a company to exist on a rediculously inflated market cap from a starry-eyed stock market. With lots of market cap, they can get lots of credit to buy fancy web servers, and hire high school dropouts for six figures. But as the economy slows, (debatable) and their market cap drops (that's indisputable, have you checked NASDAQ lately?), it's going to be harder for banks to justify credit to these companies, and as they default when they have no revenue to show for it, their payroll will be scrutinized.
In other words, to quote Vader "don't be too proud of this technological marvel you've created - the power to destroy a planet pales in comparison to the Force" (that is, market Force).
You are wise to "grab your share" before the market drops out - but make sure you arrange things so that you can KEEP it. And stop spending your nights at raves, because you just may find that someday, you're looking for the same job as a college graduate. Finish school and get that degree.
What has education become? A pile of shit. I do not dispute that. Don't you know that it has always been that? But at the top of that pile of shit is a piece of paper - which comes in handy when you need to wipe your ass.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Oh some definitely are, I know that even younger than that I was put in similar situations. In my case I knew the teacher was joking, but I'd do whatever it was anyway, in order to wipe the smug look off of the teachers face , and to prove that I could do it. Unfotunately we'll never really know about this kid. At that age it's a crap shoot whether or not they do understand that it was a joke. Or if they did understand and did it anyway.
Regardless you're correct, even if I don't believe that the act of craking the software was wrong, I do, in context, believe that the teacher was wrong. It really un-nerves me to think the teacher wasn't joking at the tim, but lied later to cover his own ass.
Of course I still don't understand the motivation to tell the children about a reward, if not to encourage them to try.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
They're _both_ stupid.
The teacher is stupid because he's not man enough to take
responsibility for his own words. "Oh, I was just joking" is
euphemism for saying "Please don't hit me".
The stupid is stupid because _he's_ not man enough to admit
that the choice lay in _his_ hands, whether or not to do
something irresponsible. I'm reminded of a Smothers Brothers
exchange: "Would you jump off a bridge if someone asked you
to?" "Heh. Not again!"
The lovely thing about this story is how it will bring out the
seething contempt for academia and education which boils
under the surface of Slashdot (how many posts shall we see
from semiliterate geeks boasting, "My teachers didn't
appreciate me either, now I'm writing ten lines of code a day
and earning a six-figure salary, that will teach _them_ to
make me read Shakespeare and learn trigonometry!")
hyacinthus
There is a raging mob. They have your name.
They will find you.
This whole "we're making an example out of you" is bullshit in it's extreme. The law/justice is supposed to be EQUAL for everyone. By making someone an example just because you feel like it is stretching the laws and imparting an injustice upon the person involved.
If this had happened to me, I would probably react by wiping their entire computer systems, regardless of what would happen after that. If I'm going to be unjustly penalized for a minor crime, then I'll commit a crime that I think fits my already given punishment. Hope you assholes kept backups!
Exactly the point. The teacher challenged the students to break into the computer. He is in a position of authority over them. He should have known better and should face the consequences of his actions. They should not be punishing a 15 year old kid for doing what his teacher told him to do. Hell, they're used to being punished when they DON'T do what the teacher tells them to do. To the kids, the teacher represents the school. If the teacher says you can do something, they believe he has the authority to authorize it. In this case that wasn't true. But it's the teacher who really screwed up, not the kid.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Nobody ever drops out of marketing because it's "too hard".
Also, although the liberal arts stigma is usually true, I know some very intelligent people in liberal arts. It depends on where your interests are.
-------
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Based on the comment you were replying to, there actually is ground for arguing that the student may be owed money. If the teacher was perceived as having agency for the school, the school could be responsible. Anyone who's had even the most basic law class can tell you that. Agency is a dangerous thing.
Following this line of thought, if the teacher was believed to speak for the school, and now the school is refusing to pay, there could be charges of promissory estoppel, which could lead to even more problems for the school.
I'm by no stretch a lawyer, but anyone who's ever taken an 8th grade law class, let alone anything more advanced, would have studied these things.
Look, I know this seems like a good thing right now, but you should really hold off on the pride for a bit. After all, it's clear that you don't understand a lot about the world.
There's a saying in Ireland: Show me a teacher who does it for the money and I'll show you a hooker who loves her line of work.
Okay, maybe I was lying about that being a saying, but if you do everything for the money, one day you'll wake up and realize that your life sucks. The fact that you'll realize this while commuting from a $3 million dollar house to a well-compensated position, in a modified Audi S4 won't help. It'll still suck.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
What's a secure computer?
Anybody who deals with computer security knows that it's impossible to make a box 100% secure. If someone really wants to get into a server they can crack it. So how do you decide who's an 'idiot' and who's a responsible admin who happened to get their box cracked by a good cracker?
Trollspotting!$!@$!@
:)
# wrote sig.txt, 23 lines, 31337 chars
If i were you id get permission from the sysadmins and headmaster/(whatever you call him) on signed paper.. some times its not necessarily the teachers/sys-admins/heads you have to ph33r.. its also the PTA's etc. if a dum adult type found out what was going on 'encouraging kiddies to commit computer crime and listen to marilyn manson' (the media would tag the manson bit on the end i am sure :) ) then all of your heads would be fore the chop :(
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
same here. when I quit high school, i promised myself i'd be making 6 figures by the time i was 21. now im searching for my next big goal.
He may not have been an officer, but he reported the student nevertheless.
When i was in high school and we just got the internet, our computer teacher had some 'network' guy come in and implement some new 'security' so that students couldn't get into the systems with out a user account assigned by the teacher. Low and behold the teacher announced that nobody would be able to get into it but were welcome to try if they wanted. One of my buddies looked at me and said 'go ahead knight, i'll give you 10 minutes before your in'. Needless to say that i did get in, it was just a simple config file that needed to be edited, but when i showed the teacher that i was through his 'unbreakable security system' he had all my computer access revoked and sent me to the principle's office for my punishment. The funny thing was, as soon as i got back into the computer lab, i had a program running for my final project which was a keystroke log program that had recorded my teachers password. So i gave myself access to the system again and removed the teachers access. It was rather amusing watching the head of the computer department for the high school baffeled as to why he couldn't log on to the system. Now i'm not suggesting taking my course of action to get back at the school, that would be wrong, but it sure felt good to put the teacher in his place for putting the challange out and then punishing the me for accomplishing the task. Just thought i would share this story with you.... A no smoking section in a restaurant is like have a no peeing section in a swimming pool.
In my HS library we had these computers they thought were locked down with a shitty dos program that only allowed you to run a few research programs ... I brought a boot disk one day, stole the program, and used one of those mod2exe demo makers to attach the most god awfull .mod file I'd ever heard to the menu program (it piped the sound out the pc speaker)... the mod just sounded like warbling cats and car horns .. anyways, brought it on a boot disk that had a rigged up batch file to replace the menu program not the FIRST time the computer was started, but the time after that, so I could be way gone before this happened :) ... it went off perfectly and although I wasn't there I am told it was quite a sight :)
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Are you nuts? The school system does NOT owe the kid money any more than the mysterious "security company" does. So sad.
Depends on what you mean by 'owe'... legally, a verbal promise is a verbal contract... which is usually meaningless because it's 'your word against mine' but -this- promise was witnessed by an entire class. Thus, it's arguable in court (winnable being another thing) that money is due.
Now, if you mean, OTOH, 'sensible people would realize', well, sensible people should realize that, if it was a joke the kid took seriously, no harm done and pretty good job testing security. Maybe give him extra credit points for the effort.
Or, in other words, if the school is going to be nitpicky and leverage the words instead of the meaning of the law, then why shouldn't the student and his family? (turnabout is fair play... )
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
By and large, it is the administrators who are stupid. The teachers are usually just scared sheep. Remember, no matter what happens, teachers will be blamed. Bad test scores, violence in the halls, poor lessons, etc.
The kids (and their parents, and attorneys) will point their fingers at the teachers, who are not protected by administration.
Administration will point their fingers at teachers, who are not backed by kids.
Why should the teachers care? It's beyond me.
FWIW, I generally agree with you about who winds up in the teaching classes. I saw a number of people go from Bio or Chem into teaching. (I almost did myself, but went to Econ instead. Not from lack of ability, but because I really didn't care about the higher levels of chemistry.) But I also saw a great number of people (disclaimer: my wife among them) start college with the sole intention of becoming a teacher.
Finally, let's not forget that just because you are not an electrical engineer does not mean you are morally bankrupt and do not care about anyone or anything. Those people would have wound up as communications majors, not teachers. MOST teachers do at least begin their careers as caring people. The same system that grinds down the kids often grinds down the teachers.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
That is the most unfair thing I have ever heard of. Its like a Cop telling about an opertunity to rob a bank when its supposed to be ungaurded, asking you to do it and give him a 10% cut for a finders fee, then waiting there to arest you when you try it. No way would the courts allow that the charges to stick at least if you can prove the cop encouraged you to do. Here the school is admitting he was encouraged to hack the computer, I complained for years while I was in school that at least here in America childer deserve the same do proccess before action is taken against them, I assume this is a public school though. A private institution has a right to run there systen however they like because attendance there in the first place is volontary. If it is a public school he should take the district and the teacher to court.
The teacher induced a minor to break a law
/.
:-)
But the student didn't break any laws, as near as I can tell from reading a few articles about this. All the student did was bypass an internet filter installed by the school, and probably demonstrated this fact by calling up a subversive site like
But by bypassing a highly fallible system put in place by the school, he violated school policy, and he got the boot for a few days. Hmmm, 3 days off right before Christmas. I wonder if he was really just hacking school policy to get some time off at the right time
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
In my Elementary school and highschool most of the teachers couldn't figure out to turn it on (Now where did the training portion of that $3 million tech budget go?)
I actually got suspended for opening up a DOS prompt and "hacking into the network" (C:\> x:, oops! I'm on the network, I'm a hacker. *cough*) in 7th grade.
The tech teacher at the highschool when I got there was actually pleased that I had been looking around and wished more students would.
It's sad that people are afraid of things they don't understand. So afraid that they punish people who do understand it.
this is quite funny, I'm refering to your analogy of the engineering students falling to ie then to Business then further down. I see this happen all the time in my Engineering school. you couldn't have hit that one more on the head.
I dropped out of high-school about a year later (and I'm making more money now as a 17 year old Sysadmin than any of my teachers ever have or will.
hehe. Me too. 6 figure income without a high school diploma -- gotta love it. This really just underlines the utter unimportance of what education has become.
I may be wrong - but Id venture a guess that you dont work for any Fortune 500 companies. You cant get a job here at XZY Auto (big 3 US Autos) without at least an Associates Degree. Which I have - and it was like pulling teeth to have the HR monkeys approve the dept. head's choice.
Im not discounting that the two of you may be talented (as am I IMHO) - but having an education can only help. Entering the workforce at 17 might seem like a good idea when your 17 but I wish Id have stayed and finished my second degree instead of returning to school at 25.
Times are good right now - and trust me, when things get tight, and the economy is at a reasonable level, finding a job is going to get very tough when you dont have a high-school diploma. Not impossible, but tough.. excepting your 0.001% 31337 troops of super keyboard ninjas - If either of you are that good you have nothing to worry about. If that is not the case (as laws of averages would probably say) you might realize later that education is not utterly 'unimportant'. Im not suggesting that it is an absolute must - and nothing else is important; but it does have value and says alot about the type of person you are and not just about the knowledge and skills you may/may not possess.
Perhaps it's time to get rid fo teachers altogether or put cameras with Mics in classrooms.. Perhaps if they thought they were being watched would they stop this BS.
There's a slight difference between doing this with permission, and without.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
It got him fucked, not the same thing.
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
Except that I don't think he WAS so contributing. I don't think the minor in this case committed a crime.
-- Michael Chermside
All the computers were Win9x with a bit of Fortres to keep out the clueless. My desk was directly in front of the "teacher". I would just shell a telnet.exe session from Word Basic. From there I could easily just telnet to the county's gateway. Eventually one of the assistant principals called me up to her office, she tried to suspend for just connecting to the county's gateway. I didn't even login once. They're running telnetd on HP-UX 10.20, no firewall and expect no one to even telnet onto them? What a bunch of drones.
The Fortres matter was even more pathetic. I just popped in a PicoBSD disk, skipped kernel configuration "ee /etc/fstab ; mount /dev/wd0s1 ; cd /dos ; ee config.sys ; ee autoexec.bat". Then removed the hash in front of the /dev/wd0s1 for the fstab entry. Next, REM the fortres lines in autoexec.bat and config.sys, save and finally reboot. One time the bitch saw this so I gave her the disk, she asked what was on it so I told her but. Obviously she didn't understand. So she put the disk in then tried to open it. Still she couldn't figure out what was on it so she gave it back.
Senior year was even worse. The highest level class offered was Web Design. The teacher had a bowl haircut. I thought the only adults that had haircuts like that were either Jim Carey or Down Syndrome patients. Her webpage she encouraged the class to visit for ideas was a blatant ripoff from Developer Networks Y2K Info. And even then her page layout shifts entirely from one page to the next.
When she couldn't help a student with a problem I would go over to offer my help. The problems usually stemmed from incorrect font terminations, etc. Over time, the other kids would call me over first, she hated this. So one day she went to the administrators telling them I was "sabotaging" the computers. After I refuted her claim she then tacked on that I was showing others how to do it as well. The mindless administrators refused to hear any witnesses from the class. That was at the end of the first semester thankfully. I was amused to hear that half the class dropped after I told them what she said.
I know we're not gonna have classes on compression algorthms or anything intresting but having coherent, mature teachers should be a minimum. It bothers me that I gotta pay taxes for this kinda stuff.
Back to the real topic... that's bullshit. Any software company, and especially the programming staff working for it, has the responsibility to make sure that when they tout a product as secure, it is to a reasonable level.
And we're not talking about an average software company, we're talking about a company that writes security software. I'm sure that they have a whole list of features that claim to give their product the edge over others and yet it was obviously easily cracked.
school: "Your security software doesn't work"
company: "Well no one should have been trying to abuse the system that's why it failed
school "Oh I see, it's the student's fault for trying to break in, the security software works as long as no one tries to break in
Thats ridiculous.
And even worse is your defense; that because the consumer is uneducated and isn't aware of the need for security software companies don't need to build it in. I guess car manufacturers can start leaving out vital safety parts since the ignorant customer soesn't know about the need for them.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
---
Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
Or as the great Athenian philosopher Mediocrates once said "Aim low, you can't fuck it up!"
That fine young lad learned a valuable lesson: Just about everything they tell you and teach you is wrong, a lie, or plain bullshit. When will people learn that the way to succeed in school is to do the absolute minimum requested of you. Do not draw outside the lines. Do not remove tags. Do not listen to any kewl teachers who tell you they are your friends because a) they are not, b) are probably ready to quit and don't give a shit anymore, c) are being investigated themselves for something d) probably don't know or care about the rules in their own school e) never EVER have the backing of their administration.
And the adjunct theory to this is: Nothing related to computers in your school can end well. You will be mistrusted, abused, scrutinized and thrown away. Unless its to aid in some fundraising effort.
Yeah - when I couldn't pay tution my teacher said maybe I should rob a bank. Then when I did it my teacher called the police. Fortunately I was able to invoke the Logic of Danse(tm) and claim entrapment.
No, wait - that would be retarded. I guess it didn't happen.
I am a comp.sci teacher, and you just cannot cut today's students short. After a few months of intensive class, I had students sniffing my POP mail and cracking my SMB password with l0pht. Maybe not the most challenging tasks, but it just goes to prove that us teachers should "put our money where our mouth is".
As a teacher, if I dare my students, I should be able to live up to the consequences.
Time to stop trusting what your teachers say, kids. Next time a challenge like that comes up, get it in writing.
I wouldn't go that far. Nix the suspension, and wipe any black marks off his record, and congratulate him for getting through.. BUT don't do anything to make him think that hacking is right, or legal, or endorsed out there in the real world. The last thing you want is for him to get a big head and extra credit from school and head off and try to hack say, nasa or something that could get him in REAL trouble.
An employee of the school asked kid(s) to do something that was of potential benefit to the school. The teacher had apparent authority to do so, or at least to the student.
The school can argue that the grade is appropriate compensation. But, they can't punish for it.
Fight Spammers!
A year or so ago, one of the city high schools installed metal detectors to stop kids from bringing in guns and knives.
One the kids said they wouldn't work that well, so the teacher dared him to bring a gun in.
Of course, the kids got the gun in, and got suspended. I think the stupid teacher got suspended too, which is good, the next thing she would have done would probably have been to dare him to shoot someone.
Seriously, did anyone else notice the progression of less intelligent people in college?
They'd start out in Mech E or EE, then drop to Industrial E when Mech E or EE was too hard, then drop to business when Engineering was too hard, then end up in Nutrition or Education.
Depends on what you mean by 'owe'... legally, a verbal promise is a verbal contract... which is usually meaningless because it's 'your word against mine' but -this- promise was witnessed by an entire class. Thus, it's arguable in court (winnable being another thing) that money is due.
Unfortunately, this probably would be quickly tossed out of court, assuming that a lawyer could be found to take the case. I'm assuming that there is a relevant law forbidding his action. It doesn't matter if the teacher challenged him - that's a completely seperate issue (important, yes, but still seperate. See last paragraph.).
It is impossible for an agreement between two parties to be considered a contract if one of the acts under the contract is illegal. For example, if I have a signed, notarized contract where I offered to pay you $2,000,000 for killing Bill Gates, you could not go to court to force me to pay you if you did actually kill Bill Gates.
Where this could get tricky is the question of implied consent by the teacher (position of apparent authority) to the student to break into the system. This would probably be a fun legal case to follow.
-- Ravensfire (IANAL)
"But we decide which is right, and which is an illusion"
I received specific permission from the network administrator to hack the network at the school. I made it specifically clear what my intentions were (to get all the passwords of staff, students, etc). He gave me the OK.
Well, within a couple days I told him what the passwords were for all the teachers and students at the school. He was kinda shocked at how easy it was for me to do that. The fact of the matter is, though, that any script kiddie out there in the world could have broken my high school's security.
I mean, come on, what do you expect from a Microsoft product?
Too bad I couldn't convince him to switch all the computers to linux. Guess I can't expect much out of incompetant people.
Well, this now proves that most teachers do not know the full potential of their students, if this was a decent comp. teacher he would of noticed the tell tale signs of a hacker, you know, the backwards cap, baggy clothes, copy of 2600, skating around on rollerblades with a microcassete redbox, always talking about his date with acid burn.
Please don't visit the Seattle Times website, the Times' workers are currently on strike, and visiting the site is the electronic equivalent of crossing a picket line.
If the teacher was a police officer, this would amount to entrapment. The kid and his parents should take the teacher, school, and school district to court. I'm not sure on what grounds, but a good lawyer should be able to find something ...
In some schools the maximum grade you can get on any assignment is a 0 durring a suspension (especially if it's out of school)... I don't think I've ever heard of a school where you can get full credit if you're suspended for an assignment. And for a good student, that can hurt him for college/getting into other courses/etc...
-- Ace
9th grade - last day of junior high, next year it's off to the high school for our sophomore year. What better way to celebrate than to bring some bombs made from expired CO2 cartridges and blackpower to school, and set them off? The principal heard the booms, came outside to look around, saw the tree limb our little party favors had severed, then just shook his head and went back into his office with a "kids will be kids" look on his face. No harm done, no police were called, we all went on to high school and no adults ever found out it was us, until much later when we could all laugh about it.
Then there's poor Jimmy, who was really into incendiary devices. He once built a remote controlled robot based on a radio controlled race car chassis. The robot was equipped with a blackpowder cannon that actually worked and could be fired remotely. He brought it to school one day, along with some blanks, and demonstrated it to me and some other friends who liked things-that-go-boom on the grounds out back near the gym and the machine shop classrooms. The shop teacher thought it was cool, just don't bring it inside any buildings. Jimmy died that year from an explosion while handling homemade nitro glycerin.
Junior year, senior friend of mine and some others pulled a prank where we climbed up into the plenum between the ceiling and roof of the school auditorium, and peed all over the top side of the ceiling. Got caught climbing down, were let off with a warning about falling down and hurting ourselves. No one ever went up into the plenum to see what we were doing up there. Piss never leaked through the ceiling. No one thought we were doing anything but being curious and disregarding our safety, as kids sometimes do.
I myself once got caught blowing up somebody's mailbox with a CO2 cartidge bomb. Police were called, I got off with a warning and had to apologize and replace the mailbox, despite the fact that I had committed a felony. I was also once caught testing my new blackpowder pistol, built from a kit, within city limits. Again, despite the seriousness of what I had done, the police recognized that I was a kid and kids do these things sometimes. They only made me confess to my parents, and take the punishment mom and dad applied. Could have been a major offense, but they handled it simply and privately.
The only suspensions I recall happening were for actual offenses, like graffiti or actual property damage to the school facilities. I guess they never considered the trees we blew branches off of to be a school district asset. :)
No one had any problem with boys carrying pocket knives to school. What else is a boy to use for cleaning under his fingernails? I recall seeing the stereotypical Texas pickup truck with rifles and shotguns mounted in the rear window parked in the high school parking lot. Some belonged to students, some belonged to teachers. No one gave them a second thought.
I graduated high school in 1981, in Texas no less. A lot has changed in 20 years.
Edith Keeler Must Die
This sounds like an off the cuff remark from a teacher that's gone awry. And now he's leaving the kid to twist in the wind! Kind of a spineless act in my mind.
Who knows, maybe the teachers mind isn't on classtime, but rather where he's going skiing for his week long winter break. Maybe he's planning something for his two month summer break. Who knows
Maybe I'm just bitter. Or jealous!
Hogwash.
I do not consider school to be part of my education -- Mark Twain.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Obviously, this is another example of a teacher feeling dumb when proven wrong. Even if the teacher was joking this implanted the idea in the students heads. I think if the student is to be reprimanded the teacher should be also. The student should get an automatic A for the semester and start teaching the course himself.
If you aren't making mistakes, you aren't working hard enough.
1. This computer probably had moderate security. When I was in High School about 4 years ago. I was "helping the network guy" (aka learning the system behind his back) and when ever a new system came on it was hacked. usually just a simple looking hack but still. But never tell a teacher that you hacked something.. if you have to just get a file off the server to prove it (and if you get caught claim Josh gave it to you...) 2. Another lessons. Teachers are a bunch of assholes. You only get 3 good teachers in your lifetime. don't waste them 3. Teachers lie (well duh anyone in school should know that one) 4. Teachers are cheap (duh anyone in school should know that one) 5. Hacking is fun. Hacking teachers is fun. but getting screwed over by a teacher for hacking his computer when he asks you. is not fun. (duh again.) Something like this happened to me once. but that was on some powermacs which sucked and a long and boring story. besides which the bottem line is that authority and network admins are assholes 99% of the time in school Especially if they like Macs..
There were two computer science teachers on my school, and the other teacher was responsible for installing anti-virus software. But he didn't do his work very well, so my teacher asked me and a friend if we could write something to get him moving. This was in the DOS days, I didn't come to learn UNIX before I went to university.
We wrote a small program that would increase the time between each time a keystroke would be registered. After a thousand keystrokes, the delay would be 50 ms, or something, and then go linearly with number of actual keystrokes. It was really fun watching people working with those computers.... :-)
Well, the next day, the fun was over. New virus-scanners were installed, and we removed the program. The other teacher never understood what had happened, ours thanked us.
Another time, our teacher managed to delete C:\ ("are you sure (Y/N)?" "Bloody hell, yes, of course, I'm sure", "whooooops"), and he was very happy tons of "unauthorized" software were installed on the computers to bring it back, because he didn't have any undelete utility himself.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Yes, I reminded myself of that about three seconds after clicking "submit." My mistake.
Unfortunately, most high school teachers and staff do not understand when they have bright kids who know what they want to do in life and do it. Often times they tend to punish them for it.
However gloating about your success in your career doesn't mean anything above them. And if you are talking about college teachers I know one who would put you to shame (He's in a special niche, played his cards right and owns a lotus and a ferrari.)
The ironic thing, in my school everytime I rooted the servers they just asked me how I did it so they could patch it and let me on my way -- I earned a lot of respect from the computer department in my high school because of my maturity through everything. Maybe you should look at the actions of you - an aid is nothing, they mean jack. You should take the responsibility to talk to admins about it, as they are the final word.
You were not authorized to gain that access from someone who was capable of authorizing you -- therefor you were punished accordingly. Don't bitch about how unfair the system is if you aren't being fair with it.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Also, the defeating of the PC's security restrictions is not a crime, unless another system was cracked into. The student had express permission to use the PC, and received implied permission from the teacher to circumvent the security restrictions. Even without the implied permission, depending on what he circumvented and how he did so, he's probably in the clear anyway. (For example, it wouldn't be illegal to uninstall PC based software, or use another web-based proxy to circumvent proxy software, etc.) Bottom line is that he did not illegally gain access to any system. And, even if he did crack into another system, it could be argued that he received permission from the teacher to do so. And since, the teacher is a representative of the school (who, presumably, owns the computers) he had authorization to crack the systems in a security-audit type process.
Not to even bring up the fact that the teacher knew the student was a minor, and therefore prevented from entering into a contract. Unfortunately for the teacher and school, however, there is precedent for letting the contract stand (at the minor's/guardian's discretion), especially if a substantial amount of consideration has already been performed. And, in related news, if a minor has received goods &/or services due to a contract, but has not yet paid for them, there is also precedent allowig the minor to keep the goods (or services, but then I suppose it's hard to return services) and not be liable to pay for them. Unless of course, there was fraud on the minor's part. Lesson learned: don't enter into contracts with minors.
That's the end of my law tutorial today...now back to your regularly scheduled /.ing....
Ever think that perhaps the other students who "just want to use it" were getting distracted by the relocation of the icons and graphics? Or perhaps some oh-so-funny losers were deleting icons, software, whatever. Just cause you can do something doesn't mean you should, and those were not your computers to diddle with. How would you like it if I encrypted all your goat porn? hmm?
Blar.
All you need is a local bureaucracy leeching
off of you. And the minute one of the people
you're helping screws up you'll get the blame
because you're not an employee.
Again about the leeching, it'll turn into a
cult situation...everybody who finds out that
you know something will be calling you and
wanting you to help them to...
Reminds me of that story about a doctor
who always has people talk to him about
what's wrong with them and why are they sick
when he's trying to enjoy his time away from
the office...he solves it by sending everybody
he talks to a bill for a checkup...
Don't think this couldn't happen to you too! As soon as people find out I know anything about
computers they want me to diagnose and fix em on my own time...
Where's the beef?
Yes, George W. Bush has his education to thank for where he is today. His third grade teacher must be so proud.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
If this kid can get ahold of the ACLU, he could probably put his teacher thru the wringer.
There is a war going on for your mind.
So he got suspended a few days. With all the press maybe he'll get a offered an after school computer job making more than his teachers. If he really has skill that is.
Simple people talk of people, better people talk of events, great people talk of ideas.
What is illegal about a company asking to have its security tested and broken, if possible? Although the teacher had no authority to act as a representative of the company in question, the company itself could legally make such a contract.
That's not a valid comparison. You can't deny that you didn't know that murder is illegal. No one is going to believe that. But it's very plausible that what the teacher told him was true.
--
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
No teacher in their right mind would do this to a student. The teacher should be the one punished here. Even if it were a joke, it's his fault for telling his students that they should do it. He probably wanted to read a magazine for awhile or something and told them to do break in (something he probably thought they couldn't do) to keep them busy.
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
It probably wasn't hard to crack at all. I know that at my school everyone knew about 50 ways to get past the security and you pretty much HAD to use them to get much work done. The people in charge always underestimate the kids who usually know more about computers than they do.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
But the teacher erroneously told the kid that a software company was promising a reward. The kid was never led to believe that the school was giving out a reward.
If a guy sends you one of those messages that says "forward this and Microsoft will send you a check for $10 for every person you send it to" and you comply, Microsoft of course does not owe you money. But is the person that sent you the chain letter liable for the money? Are you, for making the same promise to all 109 people in your address book?
Of course not - senders of that chain letter should be put to death, naturally. But they're not liable for the money.
-------
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Hey! Doesn't the U.S. government have a name for things like this? Like, entrapment? The kid was more or less bribed into the act and then hung out to dry! I don't see this as fair play...
I was also involved in a "prank" where I wrote a gwbasic program that looked and acted like a DOS prompt, but then proceeded to pretend to delete everything on the 5.25" floppy
:(
heh - we did that too - in assembler (actually, in BASIC with poke and peek), on a TRS-80 model III, it looked like the DOS prompt (we ran DOS, not CP/M on those machines- because they had floppies, the older ones did not). What glorious fun we had with that. The unfinished project that would have been cool was to try to get an Eliza-like program in as part of the prompt to totally screw with newbees. Never finished that one. Three years ago, I found the disk I had that code on. I still have a 486-33 that has a 5.25" drive, but couldn't read the disk.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
When ruling China, Mao once started a "let's speak out campaign" in which he EXPLICITLY invited people to write about what was wrong with the country, allegedly in order to improve the quality of government. Many people were elated at this "breath of freedom" and openly spoke what was on their minds. Mao then had the critics neatly identified, categorized, filed and then eliminated.
I saw this, IIRC, in a British Channel 4 documentary. Links would be appreciated.
at least they kid won't have legal charges against him. let's just hope the teacher is punished. i think since the kid went and told the teacher he did it, if you just tell him not to do it again he won't.
Same thing happened to me. We used Hypercard to program little programs for our class assignments.
One day I did a little program that would just beep the computer a few times whenever you opened my hypercard stack. WELL, unknown to me, I coded the beep routine wrong, and it would beep the computer ~10,000 times.
As an added bonus to this blunder, I did it on Computer #1, the network server (unknown to me).
Yet to keep adding fun things on the pile, the code also beeped ANY hypercard stack that was oppened.
So to sum up the situation, by ACCIDENT, I created a hypercard stack that would Beep a computer 10,000 times whenever ANY hypercard stack on the network was opened. ALL BY MISTAKE !!
So the school called this a VIRUS, and i was givin 2 Weeks In School Suspencion, and I was almost Fined $2,000 for the 'Damages' I caused to the system.
God forbid a REAL hacker would ever break in. They wouldnt know WHAT to do.
So you're saying if a teacher tells the students they'll receive, say, 100 Million dollars for doing something, and then they do it, in your opinion the school system could be liable?
How long will it be until Jon Katz pounces on this one and releases another derivative article talking about how geeks are kept down in school? Extra points for the number of times he'll mention columbine!
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
What I find funny about this is that when I was in high school I had a teacher that asked us to hack into the schools computers. Except the reason she wanted us to do it, was because she had changed the Supervisor password and forgot what it was.
Don't show school 1337 skills.. pretend to have a hard time locating start button..
This was actually quite instructive for the young man. Now he knows what it means to give power to those who have no business wielding it. The U.S. today, particularly in the schools, is full of petty despots who make up the rules as they go along. There was the case of the girl whose school suspended her for eating in a subway station. There was the youg boy suspended for having a drawing of a gun. The list of the capricious (and frequently unconstitutional) exercise of authority goes on and on. Perhaps this particular case will serve to educate him and others on the dangers of power in the wrong hands.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
They should also suspend the teacher involved for making such a stupid comment.
Regardless of the fact that he believed it to be sanctioned by the teacher the student should never take this it as permission to perform an illegal act.
Now, if the assignment was in writing and given out in class I would say that that would provide the student with the legal protection required under any interpetation of law.
So, basically, just because someone in authority tells you can do something doesn't mean you should.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
No, at age 45 he will most likely have been retired for 15 years and be doing whatever he wants. As a 21-year-old in the same position, I can assure you that I have no intention of adminning sys for the rest of my life; fortunately, because it pays reasonably well, I won't have to.
In fact, I'll most likely spend my time teaching people like me: those who can benefit from good teachers, but not from homogeneous, slow-paced classrooms.
In other words, your mother.
You guys are likely living in the wrong place. I moved from Boston out here to L.A. shortly after I dropped out, and the difference is staggering. In Boston, I very much doubt I could even find a job in the field at my age. In L.A., all the employers I've encountered are amazingly liberal and cool about everything, including money. When I walked in for the interview here, my boss had a thinkgeek shirt on; by then I knew getting the job would be easy. We talked Linux and Unix stuff for awhile, and he knew I knew what I was doing, so he hired me. It was only the second interview I went out here, and I was hired.
# wrote sig.txt, 23 lines, 31337 chars
Articles like this make me very afraid of an upcomming witch-hunt, in which hackers - even this kid - could be targets for persecution.
There's no shortage of witch hunts in our future, that much seems certain.
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
Instead of suspending this kid, they should be utilizing his skills(provided hes not some silly script kiddie) to strengthen their security, my high school did, and got some security that rivals Fort Knox.
"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"
My Discrete Math prof. in college said that if I proved that P=NP, I would be rich and famous. I always wondered if I'd get suspended from college if I really proved it though...
That story is ridiculous. That teacher should have given the kid an instant A, and asked the kid to tutor HIM after school...
Same crap went down with me in High School with a compSci teacher... he felt absolutely threatened by my knowledge... I EVEN CAUGHT MINE ATTEMPTING TO GAIN ACCESS TO MY BBS. When I confronted him, he actually pushed me in front of 10 or so students, so I wound up and decked his fat ass...only to get suspended for doing so..
School is just ass-backwords...they dont teach, they babysit... and this is partly forced on them my other lousy students, but anyone gifted is left shafted and unrewarded... which leads to frustration and boredom... (which of course leads to the dark side...)
anyways, those parents should sue that teacher and the school for everything it has... NOW THAT is a reward... then take the money and ship the kid to private school where he may actually learn something...
vanguard
"I think, therefore I get paid."
oh come now, come now, you don't have to be so dumb now.
That Security is pretty much a joke field is because there is a high-demand market, with UNEDUCATED CONSUMERS. Software companies are only going to build features for which there is a high demand. Right now, that's pretty GUI's (if you believe Steve Jobs). The consumers (and I'm not talking just about Joe Sixpack - I'm also talking about Joe Seeeyeoh) are blissfully unaware of security. The press has made some noise about it, but they're trying to make it into a social problem, (one that's easy to understand) rather than a technical problem (hard to understand = hard to sell).
When the market at large truly begins to understand computers, technology, and the security and privacy ramifications (we're talking about a chilly day in hell, here), then security will stop taking a backseat.
It's only natural that people who are interested in security will feel the desire to educate those who are not. It feels like a good deed. The cause may be better served by staying out of jail, and becoming a key industry figure, important enough that people will listen to you. Wardialing and Portscanning is the short and easy path.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I'm guessing he went to 2600 or l0pht or something, although the vaguarities will lead most people to think of pRon. Amazing how carefully chosen phrases like hacker and inappropriate web sites can sway opinion. Great reporting.
You win today's "Conspiracy Theory" award.
:o)
Except for the fact that a conspiracy requires two or more people.
One person being a premeditated asshole is (by definition) not a conspiracy.
Where's the Grammar Nazi when you really need him?
Just what kind of idiot believes a teacher? Kids are so naïve nowadays
The teacher suggests breaking the law (even as a joke) and the kid is the only one to get in trouble. Another hypothetical teacher says well maybe you should try robbing a bank. Kid does it. I would expect the teacher to be charged as an accomplice. I expect though, the school district will hold to the line that the teacher was joking, and privately chew him out for drawing attention to the school in a bad manner.
Vermifax
Vermifax
Logout
Well, on a brighter note -- at least it shows that, unlike the COUNTLESS reports and studies -- kids still trust adults.
Even if they don't have reason to sometimes.
Poor little no puppy toe!
http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?3357354385
This thing about expecting the kids to realize the teacher was being facetious is total bull. It is the teacher's job to be clear. If the students misunderstood him it's his own damn fault.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
Heh.. apparently this little stunt was quite common in high school CS classes. We did it too.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
- The teacher was in class giving this challenge.
- The teacher was seen by the student as being a voice of authority and acting as a representative of the school.
- Other students in the class heard what the teacher had said and interpreted it in exactly the same way as the student in question.
Given these three points, the student should be walking away scot-free. Here's an appropriate analogy. A bank manager is giving a seminar about the security of his bank and during this seminar, he says that the alarm company servicing that bank is so confident in their security that it will reward anyone who can disable the alarm system from inside the bank. He further challenges the seminar attendees to do just that and says that he wants a cut of the reward if they can do it, but that he doubts anyone can. Then, when someone who attended the seminar actually does what he chellenged them to do, he says that he was just kidding about the whole thingThe problem in the story is that the representative of the bank is acting in an official capacity as a bank official, and it could be fairly and successfully argued that anything he ways about his bank is said with the full weight and authority of his position. The same principle works for the school teacher. When a teacher speaks, it is with the full authority of the school, and the school district. That's how they can at least attempt to keep discipline, set grades, and make standards for the grades they do give, set curricula, etc.
AFAIK, the teacher screwed the pooch here by making a challenge to his students without the authority to follow-through correctly. It's not the students' fault if the teacher overstepped his bounds. They had no way of knowing he wasn't serious, and that he could keep them immune from harm, as he seems to have implied in his challenge (i.e. you'll get a reward and extra credit. That's a reward, not a punishment.).
That's my take on it, anyhow.
-Jimmie
Something eerily similar happened to me once, actually. A teachers aide knew I was somewhat knowledgable about their network, and asked me if I thought a determined student could reak havoc on their systems. I told him I could demonstrate just the kind of havoc he could expect, and he asked me to show him. Using a silly NT4 bug that l0pht exploited and publicized, I gained rwx access on all the shares drives in the district (they were all using the same ancient domain controller). Long story short, it set off some serious flags with the admins, and although I didn't modify or destroy any data, I was brought in front of the ruling principal on charges of "Violating the student handbook's computer code and willfully gaining access to unauthorized resources". Even with the testimony of the teacher and teacher's aide, who confirmed I was performing a responsible security audit, I was convicted and sentanced to a two day term out-of-school. That was about the time I realized how much I hated the school system. I dropped out of high-school about a year later (and I'm making more money now as a 17 year old Sysadmin than any of my teachers ever have or will).
# wrote sig.txt, 23 lines, 31337 chars
I always thought kids were wanting to get out of school.
"If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, what would you like it to be about?"
I had many a teacher in my day who would gurantee an A in their class if their students could solve some impossible problem. I think some teachers like to flaunt that they know something that a 16 yr old kid doesn't.
In a high school chemistry class my instructor promised an A to anyone in the class who could name another positive polyatomic ion other than ammonium (NH4+). One student raised his hand an said H3O+, which is technically correct (IAAChemist). This instructor told this kid he was an idiot and said if he raised his hand again the rest of the semester he would fail him.
While my story didn't really involve real hacking, for being able to actually use a computer I gained the hatred of my 'typing teacher' freshman year of high school, and ended up getting a 3 day suspension from her.
It's hard to do network hacking on stand alone tandy 5000, but there were some problems with the typing programs in the required course i was taking. so i changed the program by playing with it in a hex editor. i made a few other minor changes to the batch os too, but all in all i was helpful. Instead of thanking me, of course, i was bitched out and told if i did that again i'd be suspended.
a little while later when there was some trouble in the class I was suspended for a completely unrelated event i was not involved in... because that typing teacher said so.
While nothing compared to real hacking, others have done similar things at my high school. the fact is the administration is scared shitless of students. a classmate of mine got the entire district up in arms over some very basic hacking, and he can't use computers anymore in the school. Remember, public schools are poor =]. Once the administration moves to people who actually know how to type, things should change. for now, school computing is being run by people who are scared of computers... and scared of students.
jc
-- that's what n1ggas carry weapons for....
If you set a challenge to a bunch of 15 year olds, they will try to beat it. Duh! Kids want to compete and win at things (for that matter so do adults), if you set up a contest, soeone id going to try and win. I am mildly curious to hear the teacher's side though... They kind of brush over him.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Actually, my experience with Drill Sergeants is that they know quite well that new recruits are dumb as rocks, and they are very conscientious about not giving instructions that can be misinterpreted in any way.
Once you're out of basic training, of course, idiot officers start making their presence known...
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Although it's hard to really ascertain what all is involved in this situation, I think that if the teacher did mention anything about hacking/cracking and even slightly gave the impression that he okay'd the action, then the student should be given a break. As a former teacher - grad and undergrad level in college, I know the influence that some teachers can have on their students. To even remotely consider abusing this trust is immoral. Add in high school where students are less sophisticated, and the responsibility that the teacher has to his/her students increases.
If the teacher said it as a joke, then he should have sent the students a clear indication that he was not serious. If he was serious, then he abused his trust and left one of his students to hang in the wind. The teacher, not the student, should be disciplined.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
This reminds me of the time I changed the prompt on all the computer lab's machines from:
C:\>
to a much more imposing:
Enter Password:
with "prompt Enter Password:"
I was kicked out of the computer lab for 6 weeks.
BTW, has anyone contacted the legal staff at the software company? I'm sure that they will be amused by the teacher making promises on their behalf. With luck they will give giovani's sense of humor a real test.
I hadn't any exposure what-so-ever with computers until I was 19. I dropped out of highschool at 16, and decided to go to a Community College after getting my GED. When asked by the admissions clerk, what degree program I was interested in, I said "I have no idea, what pays good these days?" She responded that computer programming seemed to be popular, so I said "sounds good to me!"
My first experience with a computer of any kind was on the first day of classes. I was instructed to pay my professor $1 for the 2 diskettes he was giving me for class use. One had PC-DOS on it, the other was for data files.
Now, 15+ years later, I'm also a very successful admin making far more than any of the teachers who claimed I'd amount to nothing when I dropped out!
So not all "advantaged" kids meet with success - and not all "disadvantaged" kids are destined for poverty! It's exactly your attitude that promotes the class-like inequalities within our society. The truth is anyone can be successful - all they need to do is try!
I AM, therefore I THINK!
But hacking is right, legal, and endorsed out there in the real world.
Hell, even cracking is right, legal, and endorsed.
Like when a friend asks you to have a go at his system to make sure it's secure. That's right, legal, AND endorsed. This kids cracking some school security after being ASKED TO makes it at least endorsed.
Now, I admit I'm not a lawyer. I'm physicist, and a mere student at that. However, I come from a long line of lawyers. So, I'm going to call you out on this one. While in the direct word of the law, one might be able to force a civil liability case for a car theft; I'm going on very expert advice here that it would be thrown out of the court. According to my advisors, all of whom are partners at major firms across the nation, civil liability like this would not fly when the item is feloniously acquired.
These analogies are entirely irrelevant! The computer itself causes no harm... you can't fall down a computer; you can't have your leg mangled by a computer. The harm is caused by the person using the device to commit harm. And I don't think that if some thugs chose to throw a person down my well, or if someone took, my bear trap and put it in someone else's path, that any court in the nation would prosecute me.
In my admittedly limited experience, civil social liability like this is only applicable in certain specific cases, such as parents allowing teens to drive while intoxicated, and failure to take reasonable means to secure firearms. However, even in these cases, if reasonable means are taken, and the teen still drives, or the gun is still stolen, liability ceases.
Quote me one relevant case or ruling in the American justice system, and I will shut directly up. But I don't think you can. There really isn't sufficient precedent to draw the conclusion you want. In fact, I don't know that there is any precedent.
We're not talking about leaving the hypothetical houses door unlocked here, people. We are talking about failing to purchase the utmost in super bank vault doors, and spend the hundreds or even thousands of man-hours such a security system would require to maintain. We're talking about buying a cheap master lock, and maybe a deadbolt, and being confident that no one's going to really try to force your lock, because you live way out in the 'burbs.
Oh, and the universe isn't gray. It's black and white, and a whole bunch of colors, too. We just can't tell for sure which color it is at any given time.
--Use this space for notes--
Pretty vague. Did he crack RSH? ...or NetNanny?
There is a difference, and inquiring minds want to know.
-Eldurbarn
I just got out of AP calc, 96 test average, 68 homework average.
I ended up getting a 'B' in the class. The teacher would yell at us for not doing our homework, she would even say stuff like 'There is no way you could get these problems without doing the homework' (Yea, unless you were awake) Guess some people dont realize that some people find somethings easier than others.
FunOne
FunOne
My initial reaction was that the teacher was kidding and was just telling the students about the reward from the security company, but they claim that there never was a reward. So what would make a teacher lie like that?
And as far as the kid getting in trouble, at most maybe the school should have explained that it was a joke, this kid caused no damage, and in fact, immediately told the teacher when he had accomplished it.
Of courser the major problem is this: This is just another case of people ignoiring the real problem, the fact that security is pretty much a joke field. The attitude of "our lock is broken, and you have to pretend that it isn't, and if you don't play along we'll penalize you for pointing out our mistakes." Gotta love that.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Or is it actually Luser??
Did you read the article?
The article states, "The security software company has said it isn't aware of any reward for anyone hacking into its software."
Perhaps the teacher was just kidding when he said the software company offered a reward? If so, this would clear the software company of any liability, I would think.
My computer programming teacher had a program (can't remember what it was) that was on a disk that had some kind of copy protection on it. The standard TRS-80 disk copy command wouldn't work on that disk, and neither would copying the files straight either.
The teacher told me that he'd like to see if I could copy the disk for him. He didn't promise anything, not even extra credit. The TRS-80 had a couple utilities to convert Model III format disks to and from Model I format disks. Breaking the protection was easy: convert it to a Model I disk, and then convert it back to Model III. After that, the normal operating system commands could copy the disk without problems.
I did that in the year 1984, and it earned me a nice compliment from the teacher. If I had done that today, I'd have been arrested.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Next time, he will be suspended for launching russian missiles to Las Vegas and Seattle.
What about networks like www.pulltheplug.com (and soon www.inflexible.net [send us machines!!]) that allow you to legally hack machines and hold to to them for as long as you can? You can't deny the education that can be gained from using computers in a way the programmer hadn't intended. Security is a very nessary thing and sometimes the best way to learn it is to break it.
Now it sounds like this kid used something he learned on his own, not some pre-packaged script that doesn't teach him anything. There is a world of difference between breaking security for knowledge and breaking it for malious or other such intents. This kid should be rewarded for using his brain, something public schools definately frown upon. (I had a similar exprience at my school, and it seems that the story is the same. The administrators cannot see through their ignorance to realize what this kid had really done.)
My
First, if you read the article, you'd know that the company that made the software that was cracked said there's no such reward. Apparently the teacher made it up.
Secondly, as the article said, it's not right for a teacher to say something like that to a room full of teenagers and then say "Well, I was only kidding!" I know a great many adults that can't tell when people are kidding.
Third, how is he going to try to crack the software on his own computer? Is he supposed to buy it? Or are you advocating him stealing the software from the school?
Come on, it's a fucking high school. His computer teacher told them they could try it. The only person who should be in trouble is the teacher for being such an asshole.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
So, as a better analogy, let's make it be the principal who tells a student there's a reward for breaking into the school. As far as I know, a principle doesn't in fact have that authority, the school board does, but students don't know that.
May I also note, from what I remember of my handbook, you have to comply with orders of the teachers and staff. If a teacher says for you to do something, and you don't know it's illegal, you better damn well do it. Even if it is illegal. There isn't any other way that could work. It's just like the miltary, you have to obey any 'lawful order'.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
If the student committed a crime, then the teacher, and the software company incited the commission of a crime. If the teacher asked the students to commit a crime, could it not be conspiracy?
Now, on the other hand, since the teacher is an employee of the school the student was authorized by the school. The student may have believed that the teacher had the authority, maybe he is due the money from the school system.
An interesting can of worms.
Fight Spammers!
No box is 100% secure. HOWEVER, if the software vendor has said "Do X or your box is insecure" then (I believe) YOU are liable if your box is cracked. You are not SOLELY liable; the crackers are liable too, but you should be treated as an accessory to their crime.
This reminds me of the computer classes that I had in high school. My school had just gotten our first real computer lab and the teacher was new that year. She knew that I had quite a bit of experience with computers and made a deal that I wouldn't have to do the mindless busy work if I helped her keep things running smoothly.
I did. I ran cable. Upgraded some the the PowerMacs, installed software and helped the other students.
Toward the end of the year we had a "project" that was actually going to be used by a company. Like an advertisement or something. I told her that I disagreed with it, that it was wasting the other students education with this mindless corporate crap.
She got angry and since I hadn't technically done any of the assignments for that year I got an F.
This wasn't a stand out example either. There were quite a few people in other classes with other teachers that had similar occurences. This is precisesly why i dropped out and got my GED and went to college.
there probably would be penalties fo
r not keeping your front door locked.
Actually I'm sure there are plenty of real-world examples, of gun-toting psychos breaking into people's houses (through unlocked doors, while the owners are away) and standing off against the police. One needs only imagine the psychos snipering the neighbors' houses and the analogy is complete.
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
Bleh. Big difference.
Three points:
1. If a school official with the computer program told me I could try to crack security software on school computers, I'd believe him.
2. Does anyone think it's possible that the teacher did intend to challenge the students, but when his bosses came up and said "Did you tell them to do this?" he replied something like "umm.. yeah, but I was just kidding..."
3. Who is the software company, and why is the school protecting their identity? Nobody seems to be questioning them. I'd be mighty pissed if I was paying thousands of dollars of taxpayers' money for software that is effectively worthless.
In fact, I am a taxpayer and I'm pissed that my money is being wasted on this crap. More power to Aaron.
How come people always tell you to "think outside the box", and then get mad when you do?
It doesn't make a damn bit of difference if he didn't mean it. He said it and didn't say he was joking. Let's say that I'm a car salesman having a bad day. I'm talking to a customer about how the business is doing and I say that I'll give the next person to come in here 50% off on any car of their choice. Well let's say that the next person that comes in on the lot is that customer's wife and she says I want that car. I advertised that I would sell it for have off (even if I didn't buy a radio spot and tell the world). If I don't honor it, that's false advertising. It doesn't matter if I'm joking or not. Another exmaple: Let's say I'm sitting at a booth in a diner and I tell my buddy that I'm going to knock off President Recount. My buddy laughs cause he knows I'm joking and of course I am joking, but the person sitting in the booth behind me might not realize it. They call the cops, cops call the secret service, and bam I'm in jail. I said it. I can't prove I was joking, they can't prove I wasn't. Legal ass-raping is what it is. They teacher said it and he didn't explicitly say he was joking. You can't say he implied it. He didn't say it at all. Period. End of story.
--
What a bad kid!!! Breaking into a system and then TELLING THEM ABOUT IT! And last year, looking at naked girls online! That kid should be executed. I hear that Adolf Hitler liked naked girls.
I truly do hate people who punish others solely for doing what they cannot.
If there was harm done, or he was actually doing more than just breaking in in response to a challenge... then fine. Suspend him.
150 years from now they'll be looking back on incidents like this as we do upon the Salem witch trials.
My college was also had a very large education department. I swear to God that I never thought that someone as stupid as some of them could make it in college, but too many (IMHO) managed to grind through.
True story: During my first years of school (CompSci), I worked as a night auditor in a motel to make ends meet. We had a front desk clerk who was an ElemEd student, and another who was studying business. One night I arrived at work to find business helping ElemEd study for a big geography exam. The challenge? Given a map of the United States and a list of the 50 state names, write the correct name on each state.
I am not joking. I almost had a coronary.
A few nights later, the same scenario occurred. This time, for a math test, business had made a sample quiz for ElemEd to practice with.
The sample problems were on the order of
This woman was in her junior year of college, and her challenging classes involved learning the 50 states and basic fractions.
I'm not implying that all teachers are dumb; I've been blessed with several truly brilliant instructors over the years. However, don't assume that someone is intelligent enough to breathe on their own just because they have a college degree, particularly if it involves education.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
ok, off topic, but nevertheless...
this is exactly the kind of governing style that Machiavelli advocated, though not necessarily the whole "eliminate" thing...
The need for govt to internalize dissent in order to keep critics from actually revolting against the system is an effective way to ensure the stability of the society.
Interesting parallels...or am I just thinking about this stuff because I just took my philosophy final?
I am a sig.
at my school (in the UK) they have win nt4 (yuk) me and some freinds simply placed a shortcut to command.com in a word file, and their whole security plan was wrecked (we could finally access the floppy drive properly!) (hell, we could even delete most of the OS). after the stupid sysadmin realised this we were banned from the IT room for a week. We caused no damage, we caused them no problems. but they still saw fit to ban us.
This was 8 years ago. The challenge in question related to one of those hardware cards that required a password to boot the system. We were offered 150 points of extra credit if we could tell him what the password was.
Wasn't really all that hard. I rebooted the machine one day, then wrote a program that emulated the login procedure then warmbooted the machine which resembled almost perfectly the legitimate bootup process. Then the next time he left the room, I installed the program on there and waited. He came back, typed in his password, it was saved to the harddrive for later retrieval and me and a friend of mine barely could stay in our chairs because we were laughing so hard.
I'm not sure if I ever got the 150 points of extra credit. I probably wouldn't have noticed it even if I did since I was always at about the maximum grade. I don't recall the word suspension ever thrown around tho.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Teachers conspiring against displiked students? Come on... I was one of the best (if not the best) computer students in my year and a within a couple years in highschool... I never once got in trouble for anything computer / security related. Why? Because I didn't do anything with my skills that would be looked upon as a security risk or hazardous to a system by teachers or anyone else who may be in charge, whether they knew what they were talking about or not.
I think the teacher should own up to the challenge he posed, but get real, the student being innocent because he hacked a system on a dare that was given by someone who didn't have the right to issue the dare?
'This kid' should have gone to the system administrator or someone in charge - not going behind someone's back - even letting the teacher know he was going to take him up on the dare - and got permission before doing anything that could be seen as a threat.
If you want to be a 'good' hacker, or a praised and intelligent computer person, you have to do things in a way that people will see as friendly, not possibly threatening. Otherwise it's called Infamy... famous bad guys... or good guys with a bad rap, and no one (apart from other good bad guys) is sympathetic to his cause.
MHO, hopefully he's learned his lesson. BOTH of them. Teachers shouldn't give out uninformed challenges or dares that they aren't willing to account for, otherwise have some guts take responsibility for an unforseen success. Students, if your intentions are good, TELL someone before you carry out your intentions! It's common sense people, really...
Therefore, the teacher should be held responsible, the school should review its security, and people shoud ... GET SOME ACCOUNTABILITY!
It's all about the Karma Points, baybee...
Moderators: Read from the bottom up!
SIG: HUP
Here in washington state we have (had? this was back in '86) the washington state pre-college test which all HS juniors are supposed to take. one day after the test these 3 guys in suits came to school to talk to me and determine how I had cheated, since my grades in no way supported my score. Luckily my teachers confirmed that my grades were solely the result of being a lazy bum who refused to do homework.
Overall, this is another case of shooting the messenger for delivering bad news. I feel that the educational system is in dire need of reform. Students such as this one may be better off as part-time employees of the school, as network administrator assistants. This way, they can share their knowledge with the admins, and in their spare time, assist other students and staff members with any problems with either the network, or the workstation. While the student is not on duty, he/she should be focused on learning the skills needed to succeed in society.
This kid is probably smart enough to do whatever he wants after college. By the time he's 30 he'll be a billionaire.
anacron
yes, but; how do you prove or disprove "intent" in a court?
With fancy lawyers looking for witches to burn (and notches in their gun-belt), and prosecutors looking for "examples" so they can have a record of "being tough on crime" - intent gets washed away.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Thank you for your clear and diplomaticly worded response. I agree with your point of view.
Blaming the victim only adds insult to injury. Everyone makes mistakes but a mistake made out of ignorance is entirely different from an action born of malice. Both may result in injury to oneself or another but it is the intention of the party that differentiates the two.
When all is said and done, the kid will end up with something priceless -- a real education. He'll know that the forbidden is totally do-able, and authority figures are generally spineless weasles. Besides which, he's now probably swamped with job offers.
pleez. who cares, his teacher said "do it" he did it and now theyre mad? screw that... the teacher is just embarrased to all hell. someone should kick him in the pants for underestimating kids. but theyre no reason to promote the kid. the days of "rage against the (academic i guess) machine" are over no more of this "hack the planet" bullshit. why can't people understand that being able to get around security is like having new york street smarts, its something thats phat to have, but its not exactly all that neccesary OR something that everyone has to have OR is that special anymore. Hackers have lost their luster due to the influx of people who think "i can do that too" in order to get chix. bah hacking is a joke. -n-rs-
Happened to me in College... (Hi Wash. U!). Introductory statistics was 50% homework. My fault, the prof told us this up front, and I blew off the homework anyways...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
During my highschool years (quite recently, in fact) I attended two different schools. The computer teachers at both schools, while not being particularly thrilled with the fact that I exploited a number of weaknesses on the computers, never supported any disciplinary action I didn't do anything harmful. While it is important to realize that there are a lot people out there who aren't quite so liberal, there are a number of teachers who don't mind kids thinking outside the box.
Well, I guess we can all notice that this is a bit more ingenious then the classic "student had 2600 in their backpack." While this seems very naive there have still been instances. I forget which company but I know slashdot ran a story or two on the branded/watermarked "secure" audio files where an awards was to be given. Still if the teacher made such a proposal it would seem that the blame should be more fitting with the teacher who pretty much invited such an attack. This story in an abstract way does fit in with the prior news article about honeypots (computers that are open to attack/analysis for security hazards.
.--bagel--.---------------.
| aim: | bagel is back |
| icq: | 158450 |
( o ) one could say I'm rather baked
I take all of the earlier comments to heart, becuase similar things have happened to me.
Even though I lived in a "progressive" (affluent, socially liberal) school district, at the school in question, I was the token geek, and save the librarian who ran the lab and the CS teacher, some of the teachers regarded me as "potentially dangerous." (Typical herd mentatilty; Fear That Which You Do Not Understand.)
A couple of times, the neo-fascist Principal of the school (under the guise of "keeping things safe and in order") called me on the carpet to chew my ass out-- er, "correct me" about ideas I had that weren't approved by The Administration. Nothing extreme, I was just trying to stimulate conversation by responding to school newspaper columns with editorials on why they were full of horse puckey. Being a generally reserved individual, I accepted the reprimands, modifyed my behavior at school, and went home and bitched about it on the local BBS (Cleveland FreeNet).
I don't know if this exactly counts as karma, and I certainly didn't wish the grossly misguided man any personal bad fortune, but about 24 months after my graduation, the principal passed on. Seems he had multiple, inoperable brain tumors.
The guy who took his place, according to younger folks who attend the school, seems a bit more relaxed about what kinds of things are allowed to happen between one's ears while on school property. So does the end result justify the means in someone's passing away? I don't know, but 400 students a year are probably better off for it.
Just my rambling opinions, as always.
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
I had several similar experiences throughout my education - and an interesting statement from one of my teachers:
(names have been changed to protect the anonymous)
"Well, Mr. Coward, I am having a really hard time understanding your grades here. You act in class as if you haven't read the material - that is, when you show up. You have not done one single homework assignment, yet you consistently score 100% on tests. The only reasonable conclusion I can draw is that you must either be psychic or cheating. And I'll be damned if I'm going to let you pass this class on test scores alone when all of the other students have to do the work."
um- hello?
Where are these teachers being trained?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
This kid got the shaft, bigtime
--
Free Mac Mini
login: gcolombo
Password:
Login incorrect
login: gcolombo
Password:
Login incorrect
login: root
Password:
Login incorrect
login: root
Password:
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Message From lutes@tty:
j00 have been 0wnzored!@#& No 10% for you biznatch!
WARNING: System is shutting down NOW
--
i never claimed i did nothing wrong, but i do claim that these punishments do not fit their "crimes". and yes, i do believe my anology is accurate; there was no vandalism at all.
and yes, these are witch-hunts, because people are being driven by an unreasonable fear and applying their power to secure themselves (in their minds) with total disregard to reason, fairness and respect for other people's rights.
and you have no basis for claiming i didn't learn a lesson. i learned quite a bit that day.
http://kered.org
"As part of the effort to encourage the participation of intellectuals in the new regime, in mid-1956 there began an official effort to liberalize the political climate. Cultural and intellectual figures were encouraged to speak their minds on the state of CCP rule and programs. Mao personally took the lead in the movement, which was launched under the classical slogan 'Let a hundred flowers bloom, let the hundred schools of thought contend'. At first the party's repeated invitation to air constructive views freely and openly was met with caution. By mid-1957, however, the movement unexpectedly mounted, bringing denunciation and criticism against the party in general and the excesses of its cadres in particular. Startled and embarrassed, leaders turned on the critics as 'bourgeois rightists' and launched the Anti-Rightist Campaign. The Hundred Flowers Campaign, sometimes called the Double Hundred Campaign, apparently had a sobering effect on the CCP leadership."
You know, like the Bastard Operator From Hell, only teaching Computer Science. It sure sounds like something right out of an episode of the BOFH...
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
During my sophomore year of HS i bypassed security on our school's Novell Netware network so I could install Dune II and play it from any location. A (former) friend was playing and got caught, instantly screaming "DEREK DID IT!" to our librarian.
I got 2 days suspension and computer privilages revoked for the rest of the year, and thought I was being sh1t on. (I was told I was being made an example off) If this had happened today, I'd have been arrested for the computer equivilent of sneaking a gameboy into class.
It just goes to show the power of ignorance and how easily fear can induce witchhunts.
It's our job to help educate people if we ever want this to change. It can be done, and we can help by easing fears by becoming part of the defense. I did exactly that as part of my "plea-bargian", and the following 2 years I was hired to help manage the ever-increasing district computer network.
http://kered.org
The wonderful teacher who said, "go ahead and try to break the security system."
"The teacher was probably trying to get the students interested in computers and invited them to do it," he said. "He gave them a challenge, probably thinking they couldn't do it and didn't think of the ramifications of what might happen if they did do it."
Just another case where teachers who get to comfortable in their jobs make flippant remarks to people (teenagers) who have a lot of extra energy and zeal. They tend to forget that a few of their students might still be awake, paying attention to their words - and even more so when there is a possibility of reward and challenge!
The security software company has said it isn't aware of any reward for anyone hacking into its software.
And probably won't be any - that's not the greatest publicity: that out of a flippant challenge, a high-school kid broke into your system. Mind you, there's not a lot of details as to what the measures were, and how he circumvented them (probably protected for our safety by the DMCA).
I honestly would have done the same thing if I was in the student's shoes. It sounded like a cool thing, and if you can't trust your teachers...
I donate all spillover Karma to the charity of my choice... Ada was still a babe despite what people may say...
except I was banned from the mac lab, there was only one windows machine in the mac lab. I got caught in MSDOS. ;-(
happy holidays...
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
> "He gave them a challenge, probably thinking they couldn't do it and didn't think of the ramifications of what might happen if they did do it."
Reminds me of last weeks South Park. Kyle wanted to go to a concert, but was told he'd have to clean his room, shovel the driveway, and end Communism in Cuba. When Castro announced that a little boy in South Park convinced him to end communism, his parents said he still couldn't go to the concert.
I think the kid should not only have the suspension lifted, I also think the teacher should pay the kid the reward that he was promised.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
A good friend of mine (Hi Bryce! - who now, incidentally works for RedHat) was challenged by one of the sysadmins at my university to get root on their Sun server. This was in early 1992, when we just had Linux 0.14 too ;-)
I was there. I know the sysadmin made the challenge. This was also when the encrypted passwords were visible in /etc/passwd on Sun boxes, too. I watched him do the usual tricks (dictionary crack), then write a program, distributed on all the Solbourne workstations, that brute-forced it using the then new fast version of crypt().
When it became clear to the sysadmin (hi troot!) that the crack was about to succeed, he got his account locked and he was sent to see Big Boss in charge of the computing resources.
He did get his account back, but he was quite badly reprimanded for this - and it was very unfair too, since one of the sysadmins made the challenge.
The lesson is: if someone challenges you to hack their system, get it signed and in writing, and witnessed as well. If they do it word of mouth, you'll probably get shafted as soon as the admin realises his security is crap, and you're just about to defeat it...
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Anyone ever notice how grade school teachers tend to treat everyone like gradeschoolers? The ask lots of redundant questions and speak in very simple language. It as if they spend half their waking hours to be simple minded, to be on the gradeschooler's level, and then they can't pull themselves back out when they're around adults.
I've seen it before, and I think this is something different except that the teacher is being immersed in a high-schooler's world instead. What other's think tends to be important to high schooler's. Personal pride and presentation mean a lot to them. As people get older^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H grow up they begin to learn that what Joe Blow across the room thinks doesn't make a bit of difference on thier weekly paycheck. The need to appear elite to peers dimishes greatly.
This teacher seems to be suffering from a need to appear elite to students. Immature? Yes, but consider where the teacher spends half his waking hours. Is there counseling to help these people immersed in such unnatural environments to cope with the tendency to mimmick the social structures around them? Is there something to remind them that they are adults and should act on a different plane than the adolescents they are nurturing?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I think this kid just illustrates how stupid most hackers really are. It's like a pretty mild form of being an idiot-savant. Not bad with programming and such, but socially retarded. And I don't mean the girlfriend kind of social, I mean interacting with the rest of society. Your idiocy is most truly expressed when you guys share your political 'insight'.
I'm not just saying this as flamebait--flamebait doesn't have a point. I'm just expressing my opinion, and I feel it relates to the story in that this kid was 'smart' enough to crack some security, but apparently is too socially inept to comprehend sarcasm.
Now I wasn't there, so I don't *know* that the teacher was being sarcastic, and even if the teacher was, it may have come across as sounding serious. But the fact that this kid was 'dreaming of living the good life' (paraphrased) on the supposed reward money demonstrates the idiot part of idiot-savant.
On the other hand, I agree with most of you in that the school over-reacted. Give the kid after school detention or something, but suspending him is only going to harm him.
"Dad says the whole thing stinks."
;)
...
"Teacher Colombo couldn't be reached for comment, but someone answering the phone at his home described the whole thing as silly."
This is just another one of those stories to show you how sad public education is nowadays.
I wonder if things like this are covered in Bush's education reform?
Unfortunately, when you step foot on school property, you basically sign away all of your rights. IANAL, but this was the spiel that I got when I was "busted" for running an underground newspaper.
I was also involved in a "prank" where I wrote a gwbasic program that looked and acted like a DOS prompt, but then proceeded to pretend to delete everything on the 5.25" floppy. I thought it was hilarious, but one of the computer teachers wanted me expelled for it. Luckily, I had teachers on my side and I wasn't banned from the computer labs.
The moral of the story: schools are the most oppresive organizations out there. I mean, hell, you can't even carry a gun or drugs into them! 8^)
--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
Looks like they took the "important phone numbers" link down. Fat chance, wankers! Your precious POTS numbers are immortalized in a +4 moderated Slashdot post.
Interesting... but, well, I think if the kid were smart enough to hack the software, he should have been smart enough to at least check up on the reward. (Who cares if you get suspended as long as you get the reward money??!!!)
Those who can, do
Those who can't do, teach
Those who can't teach, administrate
I think we see examples of both "can'ts" in this sorry situation.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
The reason this wont work goes back to the whole schools being opressive thing... the school's in this country (U.S.) all feel the need to restrict the information provided and alowed on the grounds to be leagle... if you provided a student with a box to try and root, this would be providing a meanse of gaining illeagle knowledge... while I disagree with this state of mind I know from experiance. And yes it sucks to be restricted in what you can and cant know... wheres the Bill Of Rights when you need it.. Geometrix
Teaching is a HARD job. Teachers deserve much more respect and pay than they get in this country. I think that anyone (myself incldued) who pursues a lucrative degree (like my BS in CompSci) when they know they are smart and sociable enough to really help kids is being selfish. Fine, lots of us choose career paths with only our interests in mind. But by doing so we lose the right to snipe at teachers (unless they are obviously not trying).
"Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness." -Robert A. Heinlen
not all the chalenges are BS.. a few years back.. ok.. alot of years back when the 286 was the 'hot new system'.. a friend of ming was given the same sort of chalenge. he took the system down and was offered a job when he finished school. I know that if I was told by a teacher that he wanted us to hack or crack a system that was owned by the school I would have the strong impresion that this was something the school had intended and was part of the class. I do the same sort of thing with my systems when I am trying to teach some one about computers.
Question reality.
I, too, did this in many classes. For many years. Even when I got to college. Then, one day, it hit me. Homework/busywork isn't to be taken too lightly. The teacherss in question may not understand this, but let me explain it to you:
Homework and/or busywork is pretty much what you'll be doing for the rest of your life when you get out there and work. You're job is to do it. That's it. Don't do it, and you'll get fired. Not to mention that doing this crap teaches you time and project mgmt skills. This stuff is actually valuable, but not necessarily to learn the material.
Since the story comes from the Seattle Times, which is on strike, one should point out that the alternative is to visit the replacement paper put out by the striking newspaper workers, the Seattle Union Record and then use their PHP driven (non-MSFT) search engine to find the story there. Again, www.unionrecord.com is the site.
And, one should point out, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is also on strike.
I've cancelled my subscription to both papers and buy the Union Record at Bulldog News in Fremont myself, and get the New York Times on Sundays.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
What the system adminstrator at my college did when he discovered a student bright enough to break the pathetic computer security was... he immediately HIRED them, at which point they were on the same side, and did everything they could to prevent other students from breaking in!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
The naivete and juvenille indignation on slashdot never ceases to amaze me. Your actions have consequences and you should accept the responsibility for those consquences.
You broke into a school computer and changed it. You got in trouble for it you cry "witchhunt"!
Let's get a couple things straight:
What you did was not the computer equivalent of sneaking something into class. You "bypassed security" intended to keep you out and then you made changes which I'm sure the school needed to fix once found. It was the computer equivalent of breaking and entering and vandalism.
You leave out the details but I hardly think your ordeal" qualifies as a witch hunt.
Were you falsely accused by someone with a grudge against you? No. You were turned over by a friend for an act that you committed.
Were you found guilty without the same processes and rights as other students had? (which admittedly are probably not many)
Face it. You did something wrong. You were caught and punished for it. It sounds like you didn't learn your lesson, though.
The Math Maestro Tutoring Services in Seattle
sulli writes
This saying brings shame upon those who utter it. While teaching does have just as many incompetent members as every other job classification, it has far, far more people who truly care about their job and not about their paycheck.
I think everyone, no matter how awful your school was/is, can think of at least one outstanding teacher who changed your life- who challenged you to do something you otherwise would not have done, who helped you to pursue an interest that would otherwise have been out of reach, or who showed you a broader viewpoint on the world.
Most teachers *could* do plenty of other jobs if they wanted to. We should thank them for choosing to teach in places where they are sorely needed rather than pursue a selfish self-interest. Think of all the sacrifices many teachers make for their jobs (money, community support, time, in some places personal safety) and ask yourself if you could do the same.
Yes, there are some serious problems with a public education system where our most gifted individuals are unchallenged at best, persecuted at worse. Focus your attacks on the system. The teachers themselves are often victims as well.
-OT
zero tolerance frequently equals zero sense. i could write better rules for my system than the school district can for their students and behavior. by the way, my rules would be open source and able to be improved upon. too bad these can't be.
http://www.eagles.edu/
Elma High School
360-482-2822
360-482-3121
Fax: 360-482-1200
1235 Elma-Monte Road
Elma, Washington 98541
further info from the website (may be old):
Superintendent Bill Myhr
Business Manager Michele Young
Director of Special Services Lois Parks
Director of Vocational Services Bob Pattee
Director of Athletics Steve Bridge
Maintenance Supervisor J.D. Boling
Payroll and Personnel Officer Kay Rotter
Administrative Assistant Mike Jones
Office Manager Doris Keeton
REMEMBER!
Use this Information for *good*, not evil!
;-)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Most definitely the teacher should be held accountable... Regardless of whether a computer is like a house or not, if I posses an item and I challenge you to remove it from my possession, I can't cry foul if you accomplish the stated goal.
However, had the teacher not proferred the challenge, the student should most definitely be held accountable for his actions. Access controls were in-place, and the student was made aware of them.
Where I feel you stray is in the misconception that just because a possession is accessible, it is therefore free for examination, manipulation, and/or removal.
A basic tenant is that if I own something, it is mine, not yours, unless, and not until, I give it to you. Therefore you have absolutely no business using my house as a jump-off point to enter another person's house (who knows... I might just be watching the neighbor's pets for the weekend and you find their keys). Wrong is Wrong!
The infraction comes when if through poor practice or innaction I cause the inadvertant loss of a possession, and that possession is then used to cause harm against others. This is known as due diligence. Again, a concept that is not biased by the existance of four walls and a roof.
Just as my employer would hold me responsible for the intrusion and subsequent illegal use of a poorly secured server, so too would legal authority if my unsecured handgun is used to commit a crime.
When I was in high school, the computer teacher told us that it was impossible to crack into Novell Networks, and that if we did don't bother telling him, just call CNN. Two of my friends and I did indeed crack this network (well ok, we just logged his key strokes when he was logging in), and when we did they threatned us with 2 3rd degree felonies. Since we were all pretty good students, they were only trying to scare us, and nothing much happened to us.
Computers don't make mistakes. What they do, they do on purpose.
From what I understand of civil law, the owner has to be proven to be negligent in a situation, not just proven that he could have prevented something. If I lock my car and walk away and someone steals my car and kills someone in the sidewalk, I'm not liable. You can't just say that I didn't "sufficiently" prevent my car from being locked.
The sysadmins did what was reasonable and prudent and they weren't negligent. I can see what you're saying, but it doesn't apply in this case.
It's a very different thing to be called an accessory to a crime and to simply be called negligent. Also, there are so many things that need to be done to properly secure a machine that you can't simply draw a line with that and call it True. If a vendor tells you that you must change the root password before you go to production, you probably should. But if the vendor releases news on their website that there is a security flaw ... how responsible are you for the update? I don't have a right answer, but I don't think a right answer exists for every situation.
You've all heard the story from the news' perspective, now you'll here it from mine, a student at this particular high school.
Last year, I was a TA in Columbo's class. I like Columbo, despite how this story makes him look, he's really a great guy. He had installed Foolproof, to stop people from saving files, and getting access to the registry, then he locked IE5's internet settings tab, so people couldn't bypass the school's proxy.
Anyways, he asked me to try to bypass it, and he tacked on that he'd try to get me a government job, as someone who hacks into computers. I took the attempt as a challenge, and the remark as a joke. He witnessed me messing with it for a few days, then I forgot about it.
--Fast forward to the present--
About a week or two ago, my autoshop teacher accidentally blabbed that Lutes' got arrested for hacking. Intrigued, I went to see Columbo, to find out what he did. He was in a class, and had other faculty present, and played dumb. He pretended to know nothing about it.
Coincidentally enough, I had Lutes in my next class, I'd talk to him. Second period came, and he too tried to play coy. Until he found out I already knew the basic information. Surprised, he started talking, the words 'witness', and 'Federal court' were heard.
Lutes, by his own admission, 'couldn't hack himself out of a paper bag'. He had apparently been told of a similar challenge by Columbo. I don't know when he heard the challenge, but he had. One day, when Columbo was gone, he booted into Safe Mode, then removed Foolproof. That particular machine hadn't been configured correctly to overwrite the MBR, and block safe mode. The next day, he showed Columbo what he had done, and all was good. The following day, however, he was called into the main office, and expected everything to be just dandy. He saw Columbo, and handcuffs.
-danielson
You miss one crucial point, computer's can be restored, human life and the posetions they own can't.
- *Normality Is The Root of All Evil*
I am anti-union.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Fortes is a very good program for security. But, when it is improperly configured it can have a few major security downfalls. It is very annoying to see the IE tool bars destroyed automatically by the Fortres default configuration. That is heavily annoying.
Fortres will allow you to run regedit, command.com, edit, etc. but you will be completely unable to actually store your changes to the hard drive, if it was properly configured.
Borland C++ Builder requires the ability to open a shell to run the programs unless the APCS teacher teaches them API stuff(hah!). The lab had to be set up so that command.com could run (For NT login.bat, too) and the student couldn't **F** with the computer.
The company that produces Fortres also produces a product called "CleanSlate" which is also very amusing. It allows a student/user to change anything on the computer but once rebooted restores itself to the original configuration. Of course, the whole point of Fortres is to stop kiddies from installing packet sniffers. Goddamn them.
Fortres can't stop things from sneaking in through Word. Many a macrovirus have come through that way. Very disappointing.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.
Actually, it sounds as if you're saying "because it's on TV, it's absolutely wrong."
(A better comparison would be the BBC doing a documentary about the U.S. Civil War. The BBC is an impartial party seeing the points of view of the North and South viewpoints. But, because they're the BBC, a.k.a "media," you'll dismiss them out of hand, right?)
This whole punishing people for breaking *secure* systems is very weird, misunderstood, and a little bit frightening. It really needs a bit more thought than the 100 odd posts to the thread, but I guess we need to talk about it. I find it really disturbing that there is even the remotest possibility of someone recieving a criminal charge for by-passing what seems to be - from our perspective - a totally inadequate security system, especially when the intent was not malicious. It is very disturbing that when people - re: ludites - move into a system which was originally based around trusts and sharing, the only public way they can think to secure it is by "cracking down hard" on those scary hackers (who, lets face it, are seen to have "magical" abilities). Articles like this make me very afraid of an upcomming witch-hunt, in which hackers - even this kid - could be targets for persecution. I don't know, i'm just rambling now. I'm pretty disturbed. Maybe I'll post again after i've thought about it a bit. Maybe some one else will be a bit more insightful. This is pretty serious, you should treat it as such.
lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
This case sounds like it should follow the general pattern of a mob trial:
1. Hitman (kid) gets caught in crime, and arrested.
2. Cops discover it was a conspiracy of a small time mob capo. (teacher)
3. Kid turns informant on teacher, in exchange for clemancy.
4. Mobster (teacher) claims it was all a harmless joke. "Hey, when I told that gavone to talk to da gentleman in particular, I meant he should TALK to him, not off him. It was a misunderstandin', capice?"
5. Authorities don't got too much on the capo, so, what the heck, might as well not lose the whole ballgame and prosecute the kid anyway.
High School has never been a more accurate slice of life.
When someone breaks into a computer containing sensitive information, it makes a certain amount of sense to hand out punishment... to the idiots who left the computer unsecured.
Seriously - who is being irresponsible here ?
If I leave it at this, I'm bound to have some moron respond by saying "what - so you should be punished if someone breaks into your house.."
Here is a clue, I'll speak slowly for your benefit: c o m p u t e r s a n d h o u s e s a r e d i f f e r e n t
If it was absolutely impossible to catch thieves, and they could break into your house from the other side of the world, and then break into other people's houses once they had got into yours... there probably would be penalties fo
r not keeping your front door locked.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
The kid probably has a good case for false arrest. He should get a good lawyer and sue the teacher and school district. It'll probably pay his college bills.
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I know we see it as ridiculous, what I am worried about is has this happened enough that judges can see through the BS and let this kid off with a warning. I also find it odd that the teacher didn't think of possible reprucussions and should be reprimanded accordingly.
It is unfortunate that he might be discourage during this ordeal and might even be bitter. I don't think our kids should be jaded and slapped in the face with the scheming bullshit adults can come up with, that is not what teachers are there for. YEs they should learn about themselves and the world but speaking from experience it can make you very bitter if you don't know who you are and what you want.
When the hell are we gonna start treating our kids like human beings with the rights to which they are fully entitles??
i'm still looking for a comment here somewhere by some possible being who can acknowledge that this kid has any responsibility at all for his actions. so far he's a victim of a)the school b)the teacher c)culture (knew that was coming) d)hibachi, which is about as backward as you can get. i mean, come on. if somebody breaks the law, they have to pay the consequences. if it's a kid, they should try to correct it even more so he doesn't grow up a reprobate delinquent. severe discipline are also in order for the teacher, since what he did was stupid, and it'll teach the kid to think for himself (ie don't mindlessly do what teachers tell you to). that lesson in itself is worth the discipline if he learns his lesson from it. chances are he won't, since justice seems to be in short supply these days...
All the real reporters at the Seattle times have been on strike for a while.....
Those of us that live in the area know a bit more about it.
First, he broke no law. He was held for questioning, charges weren't filed because no law had been broken. He violated school rules. It's pretty irresponsible for a teacher to offer something like that to a 15 year old kid, particularly when there wasn't even a reward to begin with.
Adults, particularly teachers, need to be responsible, as well.
Dave
and has it been fixed?
In case you are interested and feel like voicing an opinion... Elma High School 1235 Monte Elma Road Elma, WA 98541-9038 (360) 482-3121 (phone) (360) 482-1200 (fax) Sorry, no website (worth mentioning) or email
When schools put the most asanine programs on computers in the vain attempt to prevent 'hackers', at best it stops all the l33t skr1pt k1dd13z.. but anyone with the talent to call themselves hackers or a cracker even could defeat it.
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Insert Witty Sig Here
It's what you use a Thing for that makes the difference. I'm sick of these stupid laws with no interest in intent.
If this kid had set out to maliciously disable security at his school, he should be punished. By coming forward after meeting the challenge and admitting to what he had done I fail to see evil intent.
Obviously we can't allow admission of guilt to be a free pass to commit crimes. Neither should we punish creativity, especially in children.
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
The teacher should be punished for raising the challenge. Let's change the scenario a bit. Had the school installed state of the art metal detectors and security systems and made a comment challenging a student to sneak a weapon into the school I don't think that teacher would be around much longer. On the otherhand, I would hope a student would be bright enough not to take the comment seriously as it would be highly illegal.
'Same speed C but faster'
Contratulations, your brainwashing is now complete. For your next lesson, you will be expected to run up your credit cards buying a bunch of expensive shit you don't need.
Seriously, work is only like homework/busywork if you take that kind of job. If your goal in life is to put nose to grindstone, do 30 years at a Very Big Firm (tm) where you wear a suit and pay into your 401(k) so you can celebrate your heart attack by buying a fishing cottage, then be my guest. Not all of us want to live that way.
I work for a company that is big enough to be stable (they are a regional distributor of industrial equipment) but small enough that what I do -- mostly programming dinky proprietary controllers in proprietary languages -- is a very big deal. My job is project oriented and I have no supervision to speak of. I pretty much do damn well what I please and I get away with it because the stuff I put together works. (My employer has told me that we are the only firm in our industry doing this kind of work which has never been sued for non-performance.) When I say something shouldn't be done or won't work, we don't do it.
Some people need the structure of a heirarchal work environment, and some people are just miserable there. Some people need the structure of regular homework assignments in school, and some don't. Trying to press everyone into the same mold is a recipe for universal misery.
Fortunately, when I was in school my talents were well known so the cheating thing never came up, but the appropriate answer to such a challenge would be "Ask me anything. Right now." Anybody so foolish as to be unaware that superior performance is possible without make-work should not be passing judgement on actual students.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
But if a teacher cracks a joke, it's just a joke.
Good thing I got that straight.
When I was a senior in high school, I happened to be taking AP U.S. government [one of several AP classes]. I had this little habit, though; I generally refused to do excess homework or busywork, instead demonstrating my knowledge via do excellently on tests.
Well, this particular teacher very heavily weighted the [massive!] quantity of busy-work she assigned. Thus, I ended up making an F in the course...
However, I happened to make a 5 [a perfect score] on the AP exam. And, even though this qualified me as having two semesters worth of college credit on the subject, and I was one of only three students to make a 5... I was required to take remedial US gov in summer school to earn my diploma.
At the time, it almost seemed like something out of Gilliam's Brazil. Ah well, memories...
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man sig
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the pen is mightier then the sword. the sword is mightier then the court. the court is mightier then the pen.
I think that the main problem here is that a teacher screwed up, and nobody except the people who got hurt by this action are willing to let that be said. The teacher is cowardly hiding behind the school's superintendent. It is my opinion that the teacher (and not just in this one situation but any time a teacher makes a comment that is taken wrong) needs to have the strength to admit that he was wrong. It's obvious that the teacher made a comment that at least one (maybe more) students misinterpreted. And even if it was totally clear that he was not serious, the fact that the software company is not offering any reward is evidence that the teacher misled the students. Because of that, it is the teacher that needs to be reprimanded and the student(s) need to be left alone. And even if the student did have malicious intent, the *only* thing that was accomplished in the entire exercise was cracking the security software (which, let's be honest, just isn't all that difficult). No data was compromised, nobody was hurt, and the accused student's intentions were very clear. Finally, let's not kid ourselves here: what kind of "top secret" data is there in a high school??? Scheduling data? Grades? I think people need to get their priorities straight before they go around suspending people.
-- "If evolution is outlawed, only outlaws will evolve." -- Jello Biafra
i read all the comments (so far) and the general consensus is --- nail the teacher too!
WHY ?
ok, if the kid breaks in and changes his grade and tries to get away with it. nail him.
if the kid breaks in and erases everything. nail him.
if the kid breaks in and then tells the faculty he did and how. praise him !
why the would they want to charge ANYONE?
ah, i am lost...... school sucked.
hmmm... DC in the early 80's. i saw NIN open up for Meat Beat Manifesto at a place called the 9:30 club. probably the only time i've been to DC. if you were there around that time, you had to have been to that club. i heard it was a pretty popular place for the freaks to gather at. i was a freak too i just didn't dress like one. "the good ole days" as i like to remember them. :)
Well, anything taken to extremes can be made to look silly. Obviously the teacher doesn't work for the bank, and therefore would have no authority to give you permission to rob the bank. But you obviously didn't give much thought to your analogy. You just enjoy being a (not so)smartass.
In the case we were talking about, a teacher, who is an employee and representative of the school and has authority over the kids in his class, challenged a bunch of 15 year olds to break the security on the school's computers. There was no reason for them to think that he didn't have the authority to give them such permission. It even makes sense really, that is if you aren't familiar with the DMCA and other such laws, which I'm sure most 15 year olds aren't. He was asking them to act as white-hat hackers and test the school's security, and then punished the kid for it.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
What OS was this computer running? If it was windows, I'm pretty sure the school could take the sysadmin to court on grounds of gross negligence. ::rim shot::
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minusthink [Code poet or super hero? (you decide)]
"when life gets complicated, I like to take a nap in a tree and wait for dinner" - Hobbes.
I have been challenged by the computer teacher at my school to hack the webpage, as long as i tell him and don't do damage. I know he's being serious, so why is it unreasonable for another kid to think the same thing when challenged? The kid did the right thing: hack on but one computer, and then tell the proper authorities that it has been done. The kid did the right thing, followed hacker ethics, and was still punished. I think this is another example of mass paranoia of hackers brought on by media sensationalism of crackers. Unfortunatly, the feds are trying to pass laws, or already have, to prevent white hat hacking. This is becoming like 1984: even thoughts of resistance are being punished.
Dateline San Francisco CA:
An unnamed high school teacher was hospitalized with lacerations and contusions about the face, neck, legs and buttocks.
Apparently two of the school's top linebackers misunderstood when the teacher said "I'd like to see a couple of fags TRY to screw me!"
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
When i was in high school i caused more than my share of stress-induced ulcers. One day during my junior year i was called down to the office. upon arrival i was told by the vice principal that the new attendance-tracking computer indicated that i had been late to a class 3 times. This was not the case and even when the teacher backed me up, i was told that their system doesnt make mistakes and that i was to serve 3 days in detention. I went to dentention and silently vowed to show them just how weak their system was. Armed with no more than an exacto knife, some white paper and some old used hall passes, out-of the-building passes, and admit slips, i started working. I cut all of the typed text from the passes and pasted them onto the paper in the same places where they were on the originals. Then i went to the library and used their copier to make many copies. I cut them into the same shape as the originals and viola, I had copies that just needed the details (name, time, reason for early dissmissal)hand written in just like the ones the office used. I needed a signature from an administrator for these to be valid, so one day when the secretaries were out for lunch i went into the office and "appropriated" one of the rubber stamps with the vice principal's signature. I then proceeded to sell sell the forgeries to any student with a dollar to pay for them. Flushed with how easy this was, i made another trip to the office and "liberated" a blank copy of the form needed to change people's schedules. For $5.00 i could get you out of spanish class and into an open study hall for the rest of the school year. Once these forms were filled out and had the vp's sig on them, i followed the procedure the secretaries used.... i put it in the teacher's mail box in the office. I even went to the effort of typing a memo on the school distict letterhead announcing that seniors age 18 and over could smoke in the courtyard in hopes of preventing fires from students possibly starting fires in the restrooms due to smoking. I left dozens of these on tables in the commons. You should have seen the reaction when the seniors started liting up and had a memo signed by the vp saying they could. Four weeks later i was called to the office again. The vp showed me a rather long print out of students the computer showed as being granted early dissmissal because they had a pass yet they had no record of it in the office hard-copy files. Then he went into the 30+ schedule changes that i facillitated. And of course, the memo. I told him i did all of it and how i did it. When he asked why i reminded him of the statement he made about their flawless system. He threatened to expell me and press forgery charges. I agreed that he should and that i was so guilt-ridden for what i had done that i should appologize publically on one of the local tv stations ( the one that loves to trash the schools for incompitance. I ended up with a 5 day suspention instead. The moral that ties this to the student in the article...if you make gratuitious claims of infallability, be ready to be the object of someone's complete and undivided attention.
The administrators of Elma High school have proved them selves incompetent once again. Bill Myhr the Elma School Superintendent made a comment that shocked me as a educator.
/ chapters/31/subchapters/iii/parts/4/sections/secti on_1232g.html
"Myhr said there are "other aspects" to the story, but the school district has chosen "not to bring them out at this time."
He did acknowledge that Aaron Lutes was disciplined last year for using a school computer to call up inappropriate Web sites." - The Seattle Times Company (Friday, December 15, 2000)
Myhr clearly told the paper that he was disciplined last year for using school computers for the use of inappropriate web sites. By doing so Myhr violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), 20 U.S.C. 1232G paragraph h (bellow).
(Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), 20 U.S.C. 1232g)
(h) Disciplinary records; disclosure
Nothing in this section shall prohibit an educational agency or
institution from -
(1) including appropriate information in the education record
of any student concerning disciplinary action taken against such
student for conduct that posed a significant risk to the safety
or well-being of that student, other students, or other members
of the school community; or
(2) disclosing such information to teachers and school
officials, including teachers and school officials in other
schools, who have legitimate educational interests in the
behavior of the student.
The entire section can be found at http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/casecode/uscodes/20
Now I know that if you violate the rights assigned to a student in FERPA that case law supports for damages to be paid by the person who violated a students rights (Myhr) and the employer (Elma School District)
The basic principle of FERPA is that if you are a educator, or a employee of a educator public or private that the release of any information on the student other then what is prescribed by law is going to get you sued, big time.
Aaron Lutes has certain rights as a student that are spelled out in federal law, Bill Myhr violated his rights.
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Craig Borchardt
Live Free or Die
borcharc@uswest.net
When I was in HS we didn't have computers in the library, but we had a lot of books *and* electronics class. We made these "librarian annoyers", a small timer circuit with a piezoelectric chirper that made some extreme noise at random intervals. Buy a book at the used book store, hollow it out and put it on the shelf someplace with the annoyer and a fresh 9V battery in it. Because the sound is so hard to locate ("it's coming from a book") they drove the librarians nuts. We had some that lasted for several weeks -- we, ah, liberated books from another HS library, hollowed them out and glued them together, giving is a large chamber to store 6 D batteries to run the chirper on. It was good fun.
this *is* happening to me, and has happened, in several classes. I ace all tests. and i barely-if-even pass in the classes.
it would seem logical to me, in that tests are their to "test" (wow) your grasp, and homework to help you grasp, that not only is it boardering insanity and redundancy to grade homework, but, perhaps, if you can do well on the tests w/o them, that you have the amount at least reduced.
but then, that would mean you'd have to do more than give your students a text book and one collective lecture a day...(i know, some teachers are not so, no "you stereotyping putz, you!" replies please.), you'd have to look at how each student is doing...
i dunno, just seems kinda mindless to me. i could be teaching half my classes anyway...if i didn't think it would give my mom a heart attack, i'd have dropped out already, just done that whatever-you-call-it-test for all the classes to graduate, started my business (security, both physical and system), and done that till i was old enough to go to college and be of the same age as all else there. or, depending on how well my career worked out, not enroll, just sit in on the lectures, and thus be going to college for the purposes of *wait for it*... learning! as opposed to purely because i want to be able to tell employers "i'm college certified!".
just a few flawed ramblings on
what hump?
Now he can tell his future employer that he was the subject of a story on Slashdot, get a nice salary from a computer security firm, and wreak revenge on his oppressors in a Count-of-Monte-Cristo style. Sounds like he's got it made!
The teachers were so embarrased about it that I didn't get into any trouble. This was about 15 years ago--I hope that today's teachers are a little more security conscious.
In my eighth grade year, I bypassed one of the most restrictive Windows shells I had ever seen (wouldn't let you right click, CTRL+ALT+DELETE) simply by clicking the 'Start' button and clicking 'Help' and exploiting the links that led directly to various control panel applets. But then, the administration was getting these computers from a CORRECTIONAL FACILITY. Crappy Cyrix 300s, but great Creative 40X CD-ROM drives. Never mind the fact that people got in trouble if they ever used the drive.
;P. The closest thing to a computer course that I have is "Web Design using MacroMedia (tm) products" (which doesn't even teach basic HTML)
In my sophomore year, I set Windows to automatically boot to DOS whenever it started up (BootGUI=0 in system.ini). I wanted to see if today's modern kids could handle a DOS prompt.
No one could. That was sad. Even the network administrator couldn't figure out what was going on, and one day, I saw two guys packing the computer up, so I can only assume they were shipping it back to Gateway
I wouldn't be surprised though. There aren't any computer clubs or anything of the sort at my high school, so I don't have any l33t h4x0r friends to help me out
You're civilly liable if you leave your car door unlocked and someone steals your car and causes property or personal damage with it. You're liable if someone sneaking onto your property at night falls into an open well, or steps in a hidden beartrap you left out. You're liable for all kinds of careless things. Just because you're the victim doesn't mean you're not ALSO responsible for the harm caused by your carelessness. This doesn't apply to everything - otherwise we'd have parents held responsible for the crimes of their 35-year-old adult children. But there is clear precedent, and a lot of sensibility, in the argument that you should be held liable for damage caused by computer crimes that were facilitated by your negligence.
Taking things to the logical extreme is stupid. The universe is gray.
--
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
I had a prof that offered us his car if we could prove P=NP.
So I went and did it and then not only did he say he was joking and didn't give me his car, I got in trouble for invalidating the work of the theory department.
Bah, in disgust I threw away my elegant proof.
I'm sure your legally-inclined family knows what they're talking about, but there HAS been at least one civil case where exactly what I described actually happened. The defendent (the guy who left the car unlocked) was found liable.
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It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.