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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
...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=
His mistake was in not using the samba version of the command. There, you can manually specify the name presented for the sending party. Sending a message from the headmaster asking if any teachers could bum a smoke? Now that would have made the three day suspension something to be proud of!
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.
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.
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
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?
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!
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
Yep. In my case, circa 1984 on an Apple ][ at lunchtime:This little bit of "hacking" got me banned from the computer lab for the rest of the year, depriving me of the chance to play with the brand-new Macintosh they'd just received. This punishment sucked total ass at the time, but as things turned out, being forced to stick with my old Apple ][+ at home was the best thing that could have happened to me. By investing all my learning time in the 6502, I managed to build the necessary skills to drop out of real life and join the game industry, hacking Ultimas at Origin Systems.
Like the Dread Pirate himself said: "I, myself, am often surprised at life's little quirks."
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Dear Mr. Rollins,
_ li eber/7643262.htm
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
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)
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.