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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.'"
Pleasantly surprised by the last part of the summary:
"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."
Didn't see that one coming. I thought I was in for a story of stupid teachers overreacting and a poor kid dealt with harshly.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
The words, hack (crack) blackboard, and see how many cases come up. That thing is an abomination of teaching software that, unfortunately, is used across the country. Let the kid off. He did something that everybody else has already done.
It is more plausible that the school's Blackboard was mis-managed/mis-configured to allow access to areas it was not supposed to.
Same for me! Right up until I realized the kid was 9....
Come on, really? You're gonna make that comparison?
Nobody cares - but here is my evil 'hacker' story.
When I was in high school, I was kicked out of my programming class, along with five other of my friends. We were marched down to the principal's office. I was given the title of 'ring-leader'. It was interesting stuff. Apparently, I was an evil hacker.
At first, I was like, 'Don't worry guys' because, after all, I didn't do anything bad. I did some cool stuff - like a program to change the desktop resolution, so I could write code in 1024xwhatever instead of 800x600. We'd also enabled sharing of our network drive so that we could work on our class stuff from anywhere in the building (which meant I could do homework in the library).
When I was in the room with the principal, she asked me to explain what increasing the resolution did, exactly. I tried my best, I told her....'Well, ummm....it means there are more pixels on the screen than you'd have otherwise....and it....ummm....gives you more space.'
She paused....and said.....'So, you mean to tell me, you were able to see parts of the screen you weren't supposed to? Did you ever think that maybe there was a reason those parts of the screen were hidden!'
I'm not joking. I'm not exaggerating. And at that point, I was basically forbidden to speak. Her mind was made up, my fate was sealed.
I thought it was a pretty good explanation from a 16 year old kid who didn't really know jack and who was fairly nervous at the time.
I was threated with expulsion from my school, kept out of class, given an F in my programming class (prior to this, I had an A+ and would literally go around and help other kids, the same as the teacher would. I'd spend hours in the library making my program do things far beyond the scope of the assignment. I was a great student).
Eventually, after much drama, it was decided that I could remain in my school - but that I couldn't touch any school computers for the rest of my high school years. That's to say, for the entirety of my senior year, if I was in English class and we were supposed to type a paper - I had to sit there and not touch a computer.
The stupidity is overwhelming to the point where it seems unfathomable.
I still don't know what trigged it all. The things I did, I had permissions and access to do - so I don't see how that really fits as hacking. We had an idiot running the school, and apparently, an idiot running the IT department. I'm guessing that nothing was locked down and someone did something actually malicious and they looked and saw that, OMG, some kids are working on their homework in the library via their network drive! And so, we (and more specifically, I) became the target of their rage.
Schaumburg High School/Sharon Cross - you suck.
I had a similar yet oh-so-different experience in elementary school; I was less innocent to begin with, having found out the school was keeping test scores on a shared network drive with no password while I was trying to do something I vaguely recall had to do with getting a bomberman clone running.
I told a teacher and happily went on my way; a few days later, the principal, a very friendly and well liked guy, called me to his office and nicely asked me not to browse the network shares on the school computers; it wasn't until years and years later that I found out what had almost happened to me.
Years and years later, I found out from my parents that the school IT adminstrator had wanted to press criminal charges against me, expel me, and all that, and had convinced the board to go along with it. The school principle refused to do it and threatened to resign.
Now, after college and after years of hearing all these horror stories from friends and reading about them online, I appreciate what an amazing principal my school had, and how lucky I was.
When I was in high school, I was in the library one time working on a project. The internet was acting flaky, so I fired up the command prompt. A nearby librarian saw me running ipconfig, and immediately notified the principle. I was sent down to the office and screamed at by the principle and a few other administrators for exhibiting 'possible terrorist activity'. They banned me from computers for the rest of my senior year, and I had to go to 2 after-school detentions, (A+ student, no prior record at the school). Even after trying to explain myself to the district IT admin, I was fed the line "You were doing something unauthorized, so you pay the price".
Fuck you WHS.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF