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3rd Grader Accused of Hacking Schools' Computer System
Gud writes "According to The Washington Post a 9-year-old was able to hack into his county's school computer network and change such things as passwords, course work, and enrollment info. From the article: 'Police say a 9-year-old McLean boy hacked into the Blackboard Learning System used by the county school system to change teachers' and staff members' passwords, change or delete course content, and change course enrollment. One of the victims was Fairfax Superintendent Jack D. Dale, according to an affidavit filed by a Fairfax detective in Fairfax Circuit Court this week. But police and school officials decided no harm, no foul. The boy did not intend to do any serious damage, and didn't, so the police withdrew and are allowing the school district to handle the half-grown hacker.'"
Some dumb teacher probably just left their admin password laying around on a post-it note, or hell even left some admin interface open unattended, and doesn't want to admit it. Therefor, "hacking"!
I could hack that POS in my sleep, and have multiple times. The University of Redlands has some of the most incompetent IT administrators EVER - hack blackboard, get access to student accounts, surf the web on their network with not a goddamned one of them being the wiser, under an account that I could use to frame that person.
Doesn't help their wireless AP broadcasts into my apartment at such a high power level that it blocks out most of the other wireless APs when it's engaged. 5 bars on my router two feet away? As soon as a game starts up in their sports complex, I lose my router and I get a big fat UoR signal. I hack it EVERY SINGLE TIME and they're still not smart enough after several warnings to ditch blackboard and ResNet and find something more reliable.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
No kidding!
That brightened my day considerably. Though in a perfectly sane world, the police would never have become involved in the first place.
-FL
childs had a god complex: "i am the only one who has the right to administer this network"
he built the network for san francisco. san francisco had every right to do whatever it wanted to do with the network they hired him to build. if san francisco wanted to hand out passwords to the network to hackers, san francisco has that right, and childs has no right to any say on the matter
the man was not protecting the security of the network, the man believed he and he alone had a right to decide what to do with the network. the man has boundary issues: he felt attached to the network like it was his child. he probably invested a lot of time and energy into it, but so what? there's such a thing as taking pride in your work... then there is psychotically remaining attached to your work and assuming you and you alone can forever more decide how your work is used
he was reimbursed for his work. end of story. his actions are completely indefensible. the man needs psychological help, you have no valid basis to defend the wackjob. lock childs up, he only deserves punishment and psychological treatment
and furthermore WHERE THE HELL DO YOU GET OFF COMPARING TERRY CHILDS TO A NINE YEAR OLD
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Real hackers don't do slashdot. This place is lame.
As a youth in high school, I knew the passwords for 90% of the administration. With it I could have changed the grades, class schedule, modify the student record, or even suspend any student in any school in the entire county. How did I know it? I didn't hack anything. Teachers frequently told me their passwords so I could help them with computer problems (the only full time IT staff at the school was hired because he was someone's cousin, and a good basketball coach, and the county wouldn't give them funding to hire an actual basketball coach). It didn't take long for me to realize they followed a simple pattern based off the teacher's name. It was an easy jump to realize the administrators had the same pattern. They were supposed to change it when they logged in the first time but few knew how and even fewer bothered. I could have easily caused a lot of mischief, accessed confidential student records, or boosted my grades (something that would never be noticed because the scantron system teachers used to input grades frequently made errors, and administrators would fix them with only verbal confirmation) but I didn't, because it would have meant violating the trust of a couple of excellent educators who had truly gone above and beyond in a system that rewarded politics and actively punished excellence.
The point being, security in schools is often terrible, and it does not require hacking skills to acquire the credentials or access to systems a student should not have access to.
I imagine this has already been said, in some form or other, but if their systems were SO insecure that an 8 year old could compromise them, then the school officials themselves should be charged with gross incompetence and fired summarily!
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
And you are wondering why Europeans laugh hysterically when Americans tell us they live in the freest country in the world.
>they can abuse net send
If ONLY there were a way to disable that!
Boy, this computer stuff sure is hard!
The latest Slashdot meme.
1. UK doesn't not represent Europeans. I think UK is one of the worst in terms of liberty in Europe.
2. US and European are not the only ones in the World.
Europeans laughing; that America is not the freest country in the world, does not infer that they feel Europe is the freest "country/continent" in the world. That would be an interpretation of the statement.
if a teacher can change the superintendent's passwrod, you have a problem right there.
Well, America is a free country.
We are a free people.