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8th Grader Suspended for Using 'net send' Command
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.
This does remind me of my school days, I got apprehended because I was playing with a magnet during lesson. It also reminded me what school (well, Italian school to be precise) seems to be all about: taking away the fun away from culture.
:-)
;-P
Because that's what hacking is, it's a form of culture and fun. And that 13 y.o. boy is a hacker, or at least he has a hacker attitude, which is good! Honest fun with computers should be encouraged by the school, not reprehended.
And did you read the email from the teacher? "Before you make comments you should be a teacher". Quite typical. Using the same argument I would then say, well, before calling someone a hacker, you should be a hacker too, right?
Oh, by the way, when I was his age I was hacking my Speccy... fortunately for me, it was not in that school otherwise I would have got expelled!
Now for the karma whoring: "It's Micro$oft's fault! If they used Linux then there wouldn't have been any chance of NET SENDs"
By the way, what would have happened if he did launched a batch file like this (say it's called a.bat)
net send foo Hey!
call a.bat
? That IS annoying...
My Stack Overflow user
After some kids realized that net send was annoying and unblocked the district decided to punish all that used it (and got caught of course).
But, all they had to do was disable windows messenger service...
This really shows the naivety of some of our schools towards technology, which in my school, was always a huge problem. Teachers could NOT keep up with the kids in computer classes, which left a whole slew of kids "left behind" per se (thanks Bush).
paul
Most of the people who run our public educational system are, unfortunately, not very well rounded. Often they are too quick to make presumptions while drowning in ignorance.
Back in my computer class in high school, I often finished my assignments way ahead of schedule, so I had a lot of free time.
We had a Novell network where I managed to gobble up 25% of the network storage space by hiding my files in a directory with a difficult-to-type name.
The teacher couldn't figure out how to delete my files, so he wrote me up (without even asking me to delete them).
Since the school didn't have any classification for this kind of "deviant" behavior, they decided to call it "computer vandalism", and gave me the same punishment as regular school vandalism, three days suspension.
If they had asked, I would have just deleted the files.
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It certainly warrant some action, though most here would argue against it. After all, it does affect every computer on the network, and you and I would hang the kid if the message was spam.
But a suspension? A three day suspension? Friends of mine have been suspended for less for bringing weapons to school. That one was bullshit too, but at least was a bit more understandable. Now this, a kid is suspended for doing something not forbidden (oh, they have rules against 'hacking'? Then it's their responsibility to understand the term).
And as for that teacher, she's right. Most people have no idea what the inside of a classroom is right. Of course, it seems she doesn't either. Any competent teacher should recognize that experimentation leads to the most learning.
Second, it doesn't sound like he did it during a class. It may warrant a detention if the child habitually ignored the teacher for his own experimentation, however this doesn't seem to be the case.
The primary problem I see with education is that it is nearly impossible to evaluate teachers. If good teachers (and there are a lot of them) could be supported and not interfered with by others, it would be great. But this isn't the case. The good teachers out there are more than offset by ignorant policies, moronic teachers, incompetant administrators, and yuppie families.
If I were only looking at education, the future would look really bleak. Fortunately, kids seem pretty good at surviving their schooling.
I've never known anyone who is really proficient user to say nothing of becoming a programmer or administrator who doesn't experiment. It's the people who are afraid to touch anything on their computer who drive me nuts. You can't teach them anything because they are to afraid they will damage something.
Take a kid with a bit of curiosity using a command that the school made available to him and saying nothing more than "Hey" and expelling him for being curious and experimenting with things. This is a really sad statement on how this school is run. And the pundits lament the low numbers of students who go into science/math/etc. With curiosity beaten out of them it's no wonder.
Disclaimer: I couldn't get the article to load so I'm only going on the posted message. There may be more to the story than I know.
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Junior year of high school--I showed a few classmates in my AP Comp Sci class (which was a large Mac lab) how to bypass the "At Ease" security program (Apple's then-answer to problem of keepings Macs in a public space from being trashed).
I hit a keystroke, dropped into the debugger, typed "gfinder" (I believe) and it took you to the full featured Finder.
I didn't do any trashing myself, but the kids that I taught this to told others and someone trashed a Mac. So I got suspended for 3 days. They couldn't spare the time to track down the kids who did the real damage and instead decided to take me down instead. This was about 9 years ago.
When I was in ninth grade, I went to my school's measly computer room (all of ten computers) at lunch time and put passwords on all the screensavers in the lab. Little did i Know that there were several seniors writing papers over the double block (one class before, one after lunch)... holy crap was I in trouble! Not only that, but my best friend ratted me out to the admin... I can still see the scene: i was called to the computer room after lunch, and as soon as he saw me my best friend pointed at me and said "He did it!" Ah, those were the good ol' days.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
ObRTFA. {smile}
According to the article, there was no stated policy, and this student was "made an example of";
I, myself, have been caught in this short-sighted level of computer administration by business teachers masquerading as computer/LAN administrators. A typing teacher of mine, named Ms. Noah, once strolled past my workstation (in, I believe, grade 7 or 8) while I was opening a document in WordPerfect (5.1 - the latest and greatest at the time). At some point prior to this occasion, a folder called "Noah" had been created in my network home directory, presumably for the purposes of distributing assignments et al. I ignored it and selected my document. Without accepting any explanation, she demanded that I re-open the file/open dialog at which point she determined, with the help of the other sysadmin, that I was "hacking" and had, in their estimation, entered Ms. Noah's home directory. This was an unquestioned, no exception suspension offence. Thus began my downhil road where computers were concerned, and I was thereafter labelled as a "trouble maker", which went so far as to see my high school warned about me which gave me very limited (and supervised-only) access to school computers, and removed several opportunities for advancement in my chosen field.
Other such examples included;
For years, and due to past 'behavioural' problems (ie; I am a hands-on person faced with almost entirely book/written work, which caused me to fidget), my parents, both working full time jobs, had no reason to disbelieve, or no inclination to investigate each offence. As a result, I was completely at the mercy of unqualified, nay, ignorant instructors who believed they could do no wrong.
A lesson to all parents; investigate why your son/daughter is being penalized. You could save a lot of strife for yourself in the next few years of their education, and save them the hassle, embarrassment, and future behavioural problems associated with placement in any number of behavioural modification classes as a result of poor educators.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
Good thing I am not as young as this kid. I have played plenty of net send pranks.
I remember my first CS lab where the TA had his computer hooked up to the projector. I kept sending him messages that the network was going down in five minutes. He sarcastically responded, "Uh oh, guess I better do as the computer says".
If I was 10 years younger it'd be me getting suspended in Junior High. I guess that is a big difference about college. No hand holding. Nobody cares if you are not learning crap, so you are best learning and experimenting as much as possible on your own.
Later on when I was a lab assistant. I put my junior programming skills to the test and built a GUI in front of netsend to make it more like a AIM. Pretty soon most of the lab assistants were using it to message each other and broadcast messages informational messages to the users, like the lab was closing. From what Beverly Sweeny was saying, that is exactly what she does not want the kids to do. The kids should not experiment, only do what she says. That way she can proliferate the next generation of retarded users.
Mrs. Sweeney's page has pictures of two of her 'star students', along with their names.
Their policy documents online >> student records >> legal show that that is a release of personally identifiable information. Just their names would be fine, or just their photos, but as it sits, unless she has the proper paperwork showing that it is a proper release of information, she is breaking at least state law and her district's policy.
[having worked with my own local school district in the past, they require all web pages to be screened to make sure that (1) only a first name shows up on the web page, and (2) no student can be tied to a photo.]
In fact, those photos with their first names could stop them from receiving federal funding for improper use of directory information.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Wow.
That reminds me of something similar which also happened to me during high school. I took a "computer science" class which was actually nothing but a word processing class. Since I typed so much faster than everyone else, I would finish my assignments much earlier, then spend the remainder of my time in class working on various PHP projects.
One day the teacher demanded to know what I was doing when she saw me using my syntax highlighted code editor along with windows explorer for ftp. Not understanding what any of what I was doing actually was, much like in your story, I was blindly accused of "hacking" and asked to stop. Though my story has a happy ending, because I explained to the counselor what I was doing who in turn explained it to the teacher. God forbid the teacher should listen to the students directly.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Maybe slashdot should get some sponsors to send that boy a prize. How about a Mac G5 or Athlon-64 loaded with Linux. Throw in a bunch of O'Reilly books for fun. The new annual I was punished for being smart award!
Okay how about a GBA SP?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Should the student have done it? No. He was probably feeling just as clever and superior for his technical knowledge of the net send command. And he probably did it for showing off. Nothing bad about that, but at the same time, he knew that he would annoy a lot of people. He shouldn't need a written policy to tell him to not annoy 50 people through the net send command. He should be able to deduce that from common sense.
Is it right to suspend him? Maybe. I'm not sure I understand all these crazy american school policies anymore, but a fair comparison would be with graffiti or tagging, but without the economic damages. I am not sure being suspended for three days is over the top for that. But it sure isn't way beyond reasonable imagination. Move on, I'm sure you are able to find better examples of injustice than this.
The message was something along the lines of "The harddrive is going to be wiped in 3 seconds. 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... Wiping harddrive..." And then it would blank for a couple of seconds and wait for a keypress. Obviously the next student freaked out and called the teacher over.
In today's environment I would probably be suspended. Instead, the teach editted the file and put a message about experimention being wonderful but to be careful because we would be held responsible for any damages. Basically getting caught (she knew it was me) but only getting a warning (and the fact that the teacher had the same level of knowledge) was a good learning experience.
I think the problem is partly because teachers today, for the most part, have lost the inquisitive nature and don't know enough to keep up with the students. That makes the teachers afraid: both because they are being outpaced in computer learning and because they can't control or understand what the students are doing.
Just look at her CompLit/TechApp webpage. In particular notice this image where she adds the label: "Sometimes this is how we feel !!!" She apparently finds computers difficult and frustrating.
Someone who finds math frustrating is obviously a poor choice to teach calculus. Someone who finds computers frustrating is obviously a poor choice to teach computers.
According to her bio she seems well qualified in "social" fields, but she's just not a techie. She thinks the ordinary use of the net send command is "tampering" and "hacking". The certification program she took in computers didn't mention it therefore it must be "evil hacker black-magic". Sorry lady, it's not tampering and it's not hacking.
If they want to reprimand the kid for "being disruptive", fine. What he did was no more disruptive than sticking his head out in the hallway and shouting "Hey!". That warrants a warning, or at most detention.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Beverly Sweeney, a computer teacher and campus computer liaison with the district, entered Carl's computer class and quickly figured out where the message originated and who sent it.
According to Carl, Sweeney asked him, "Did you do this?"
"Yes," he replied.
"Do you know that this is serious?" she asked him, according to Carl.
"No," he replied.
Then she asked how he did it, and he showed her.
People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this.
Actually, in a way... it's most DEFINITELY Dubya's fault.
The whole nation has learned to over-react to things as a result of this administration; everyone sees terrorists, hackers, "evil-doers" around every corner. You've not been so paranoid a nation since McCarthyism.
So yeah... it IS very much President Gump's fault.
I'm a technology coordinator at a NYC public high school that gives linux shell acounts to all of our students. I teach a Linux / PHP class where I teach kids all fun unix things like write and talk and wall and such... I then teach kids when it is and isn't appropriate to use it, and I'm really explicit about how if, in the middle of a lesson, I do a 'w' and see people "talking," I'll disable the command or kill their processes. But they are welcome to write me from home if I'm logged in if they need help... and they do use talk to chat with friends, etc...
Yes, the school overreacted. This was not a suspendable offense. This was a 'talking to' offense. Here's what I would have said:
"That was disruptive. Please don't do that. A) It's a disruption, B) We don't want a ton of kids doing this and saying much less appropriate things than 'Hey.' C) Who taught you that? D) Do you like fiddling around with computers and learning lots of nifty tricks? Why not work for the Tech Squad here and learn more?"
a) you teach ethics.
b) you find a student's interest and point it in really good positive ways.
c) you treat the kid as a human being.
d) you use the entire event as a teachable moment.
Now, all that being said, I find the reporters justification for reprinted the entire email pretty weak, and the idea that he used this as a chance to attack teachers -- even though her response was equally weak.