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.

Comments

School days

[Sklivvz]

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.

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... ;-P

Typical ignorance...

[jafuser]

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.

A bit excessive

[Pyromage]

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.

Encourage him, don't expel him

[linuxwrangler]

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.

Re:FYI: School's Homepage

[Frobnicator]

Very interesting.

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.

Sad to see a teacher struggle in the wrong subject

[Alsee]

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.

-