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8th Grader Suspended for Using 'net send' Command

Posted by Cliff on from the you-can't-make-this-stuff-up dept.

HRH King Lerxst writes: "The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has an article detailing how a middle school student was suspended for three days for 'hacking.' His hack? Sending a popup message to the other computers in the school...from within the shcool." The 8th grader in question used the "net send" command to send a single word message ("Hey!") to the 80 machines tied to his school's network. How this can be construed as "hacking", I leave up to you.

8 of 499 comments (clear)

  1. It's called hacking... by Smidge204 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...because the people in charge (Teachers, parents, school board, etc) don't understand what's going on.

    It's just that simple. Whenever someone does something with a computer that they don't understand, it's hacking. A High School friend of mine got accused of 'hacking' by downloading Netscape once.

    Fear and ignorance, ignorance and fear...
    =Smidge=

    1. Re:It's called hacking... by Monkelectric · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Actually you're right but you don't know why. Although I am not a teacher, there are 5 teachers in my immediate family so I am pretty well acquantied with the subject.

      In a nutshell, the reason the educational system has gone to hell is that teachers have *NO LEVERAGE* over students. Teachers have no way to *make* kids do anything. The only options teachers have for disciplining kids is to have them removed from the classroom (suspension, on campus retention, etc). Guess what, the kids don't care :) Most of the time when a teacher calls a kids parents the parents yell at the TEACHER and threaten to sue and whatnot. The teachers are in an impossible situation. A family member of mine once called a girls mother because she didn't write an essay. A whole *stinkin* half page essay. The assignment was to research something about apples and write it in essay format. The mother (who was black) came down to the school and screamed at said family member, "You're a racist! Black people don't eat apples! Apples are white people food. If the assignment was on sweet potatos then my daughter could have done it! Black people eat those!"

      Since you're reading slashdot, I would wager a large portion of you have not been exposed to *THIS* America. That is the real face of education. And in that context, educators deal out punishments like the net-send kid got to try and maintaim order and leverage over students. The message is not "netsend is hacking" it's "don't demonstrate our ignorance infront of students causing further loss of control".

      --

      Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley

  2. My take on this by dauvis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    From the article the teacher was quoted as saying, "Hacking into a system should be highest on the list of tampering violations. I believe the other students are now aware that the district takes this seriously and will not tolerate such misuse of our equipment." In addition to "Rollins told me that students had been using campus computers in unacceptable ways, and he hoped to make an example of Carl."

    It looks like to me that the teachers can't/won't secure the computers and decided to throw the book at the first kid to do something that they were able to catch in hopes that it scares the others into submission.

  3. Great article - did anyone else read it? by borgboy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The writer seems to get two important things - that using net send is certainly not hacking, and deeming it so is demonstrative of the school district's lack of understanding of a subject area they purport to teach.

    How about emailing the principal of that school and telling him what you think of his actions?

    --
    meh.
    1. Re:Great article - did anyone else read it? by Sylver+Dragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      For those of you who think this is an ok thing to do, try pulling something similar at work. You wont get fired, and prob not sent home w/out pay for a day, but your boss and others will most likely come in your office and be like umm... wtf?

      Maybe I'm special, but I would probably just get a chuckle out of most of my co-workers. The last guy who sent one of these out domain wide, by mistake during a test, just got razzed for it a bit.
      Seriously, the kid was experimenting with a command he had learned. He was actually trying to further his own education by playing with stuff on his own. God forbid a student actually be interested in learning and try to go beyond the approved ciriculum. Yes, it can cause problems, but this should be anticipated and some pre-emptive measures taken. For example, why the hell was the computer lab on the same LAN as the actual school network? Forget disabling the messenger service, it should be there to experiment with, but the computer lab should have been on a separate VLAN, which is not routed to the normal school network, and had all internet traffic logged, with some good outgoing firewalling and URL/IP re-direction. Also, have a central image server (which is powered off all day) and at the end of each day, just multicast a pure image back out to all of the clients. This way the students can actually try things and learn on thier own, and even if they screw a system, it's ready to roll the next day.
      So yes this is a case of "oh god teachers have no clue.", whoever set that school's LAN up needs a good whack from the clue stick. Sure, what the kid did was disruptive, but only because the school failed to plan for students who actually want to learn,and god forbid, actually experiment. If anything, this type of thing should be encourged, the whole "think outside the box" idea. But no, schools are now more interested in churning out mediocre students who are good citizens and don't think for themselves.

      --
      Necessity is the mother of invention.
      Laziness is the father.
  4. omg... by Vaevictis666 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "If they are allowed to experiment and do things on the computers that the teachers have not specifically given them permission to do, we would never get any computer education accomplished."

    No, if they are allowed to experiment and do things ANYWHERE that they have not been given specific permission to do, it's called learning. Why should computers be any different?

  5. The Kid was Wrong? -- I have to disagree... by Cliff · · Score: 4, Insightful
    however, what the kid did was wrong, and that's that. his punishment was overkill, and we'll all (/.'ers, that is) agree. detention or a mandatory essay was probably more appropriate.
    Sorry, jeffy. I'm afraid I disagree. First off, there were no written policies against this. No teacher told the kids that the "net" command was offlimits. All of the machines were configured to let this through.

    He learned this command from his father and decided to experiment with it at school. Are educators now in the business of making children afraid to experiment and learn?

    Back when I was in elementary school we were encouraged to experiment with computers as long as we followed the guidelines. If we encountered an issue where the guidelines were unclear on, our teacher told us what we did that may proove to be problematic later and the guidelines were updated.

    It would be interesting to note if the school has updated their guidelines on this topic and have take the (simple) steps necessary to insure this doesn't happen again, but saying that what this kid did was wrong is borderlining on the dangerous.

    Is it any wonder why some people grow up afraid to learn computers? I'd hazard to say maybe we'd do well to have better trained educators and more concise guidelines rather than knee-jerk suspensions and "computer educators" that don't know how to secure their own networks, nor how to handle the children whom the parents put in their care!
  6. Letter time by phorm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Dear Mr. Rollins,

    Before continueing, I might want to inform you that the following article has appeared on a major internet website, one visited by tens of thousands of technicians and other professionals a day. You may want to prepare your inbox.

    http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/columnists/dave_ li eber/7643262.htm

    As per the content of the article, it may be biased, but I am writing to assure you of the following:

    The "net send" command is in no way a 'hacking' tool. "Net" is a command used by windows/windows-users for many network tasks, and "net send" is a communication command which does not adversely affect any machine.

    Furthermore, the punishment for this "offense" seems neither fair nor warranted? You may not think that I have any cognisance of the type of things that occur in schools, but I can assure you - as an IT support technician/admin for a school-district - that I know a great deal about it. This problem would have been easily dealt with, and any issues caused by it not warranting such a punishment.

    Furthermore, the student - in investigating parts of computing that are obscure to many - seems to be showing promise and intelligence. To attack the natural curiousity of the student is to stifle his natural inclination to learn and investigate. Rather than punishment, you should consider giving the student materials to learn about computing in a way that might be more productive and advanced than "net send."

    Certainly I myself did a certain amount of investigating and playing with such commands when I first gained interest in computing. As my teachers promoted my curiousity I eventually found a lucrative career in both computer programming and administration. Had such a punishment been meted to me, it may have impaired the drive which brought me to my current employment.

    Please consider that while the commands used may be obscure to many, they are not highly technical nor dangerous in nature. An offensive action taken against the unknown is neither ethical nor mature in nature, and such reactions should be the bane of modern education.

    Sincerely,

    (my name here)
    IT Support Administration

    (and yes, I do work in educational IT support. suspension for net send would be laughable in comparison to the other things students try to do or do here)