Slashdot Mirror
Top Student Charged With Fixing Grades For Cash
alphadogg writes "A Nevada student who gave the opening address at his high school graduation last year has been charged with breaking into his school district's computer system and bumping up his classmates' grades for a fee. Police say Tyler Coyner, 19, was the ringleader in a group of 13 students who have been charged with conspiracy, theft and computer intrusion in connection with the case. Last year, Coyner somehow obtained a password to the Pahrump Valley High School's grade system and, over the course of two semesters, offered to change grades in return for cash payments, police say."
"Coyner, now a student at the University of Nevada in Reno, had a 4.54 grade point average,"
I think he forgot how grades work...
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
So for anyone who has seen that film, doesn't this seem remarkably similar? (Aside from starting a nuclear war...)
was the password on a piece of paper in the office and he just know where it was stored it?
"password", mmm, no. "123456" Oh, hey -- we're in!
Caveat Utilitor
doing it for free is not the same as doing it for cash.
If you do it for free maybe you get a F or get kicked out but for cash may mean doing some time.
his ROT-26 encryption!
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We need to come down hard on miscreants like this. Sure, right now he's stealing passwords from the school office and changing grades, but soon that won't be enough for him, and before long he'll be wardialing military contractors with his IMSAI 8080 and acoustocoupler modem.
was it "pencil"?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
asdfgh
> "password", mmm, no. "123456"
Remind me to change the combination on my luggage.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
I guess we'll know when defcon changes to something other then the current 5.
New things are always on the horizon
Sorry wrong thread. :-(
New things are always on the horizon
He just misinterpreted the rules.
Not changing a password at least once in two semesters, i.e., a whole school year. Tsk tsk.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
I'm sure Goldman Sachs and major banks are scrambling over themselves to offer him a fat six figure starting salary.
you had me at #!
Was he really the top student, or did he fix his own grades too?
MABASPLOOM!
Save Ferris
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
In the Pahrump Valley Times profile, Coyner says he dreamed of attending an Ivy league school like Harvard and that he wanted to become a hedge fund trader.
Wow. A lying, cheating, bastard dreams of being a hedge fund trader. I'm sure that the guild of hedge fund traders will bar him preemptively from joining them, thereby preventing everyone's pristine reputation as ethical and trustworthy human beings from being sullied by association.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Haven't you played Deus Ex? The password was probably left on the Bathroom floor, or behind a few stacked up boxes in the Gymnasium.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Turn it up to 11
"Hedge fund trader", "ethical", "trustworthy" being used in the same sentence = ROFLMAO
New Economic Perspectives
OK, so reading this I ended up with a few questions
Or, is this an all grades get entered for everything as opposed to a just final grade, and the system computes the final grade for the course. Most of those points still apply. And I would want to think that some teachers are going to have some idea of what grades they gave the student and would be able to notice a drastic change.
But then, an "A-" to an "A" might not be noticed depending on what all the student did over the grade period because it isn't too drastic.
"I didn't get a 'Pahrump' out of you."
"Pahrump!"
"You watch your ass."
That's what happened in my high school — the school IT people would store the administrator password on sticky notes. Inevitably one fell off in the hallway, and my friends and I found it, and decided to pull a few pranks.
The administration and IT people got really pissed and changed the password. Which, of course, we found a few days later sitting on a sticky note in the hall...
It's really more sad than funny, actually, because not only did the IT people use the same administrator password everywhere, our school actually served as the ISP/host for a lot of municipal services around our county, including the police department.
>>>Turn it up to 11
DEFCON goes from 5 (all clear) to 1 (nuclear extinction). Cmon. Haven't you ever watched Stargate or those old Cold war movies? ;-)
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
After college, he will probably get tapped by a rating agency right away. Standards & Poors, Fitch, whatever.
lucky brat. then he will be able to fix grades all he wants, and will be paid for and applauded for it.
Read radical news here
Was probably pencil.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
Greed is destroying America, indeed, the excessively rich are evil traitors. Scumbags.
Mr. Sheen....is that you?
Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, McKenzy etc are all at awe by the precocious ability shown by this young man. Mr Werobam Erica, spokesman for the Cleptolegit Institute, a think tank where finance managers of the top companies exchange ideas about how to rake in millions of dollars and amending the laws post-facto to make it legal, said that this man is CEO material and predicted great things in store for him.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
>>>Turn it up to 11
DEFCON goes from 5 (all clear) to 1 (nuclear extinction). Cmon. Haven't you ever watched Stargate or those old Cold war movies? ;-)
That may have been a Spinal Tap reference. http://youtu.be/UeOXsA8sp_E
When a user complains about a sound password policy, this story is a good explanation of why it's really not just the admin's special way of annoying everyone.
Working...
And got a computer. How's that for being born under a bad sign?". Meanwhile across town..."...nine times......GRACE! GRACE!"
we ran a windows password cracker on a shared PC in high school and ended up with hundreds of account passwords, including the principal's. it was hannah, leading to much lulz -- WE'VE GOT HANNAH MR PRINCIPAL. +10 to anyone getting the reference.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Pretty crazy how few people are getting the reference. Kind of makes me wonder who exactly reads slashdot.
but the grade system may just have 1 login that is used by more then 1 person or it's some system that does not have policy's.
Also schools some times still use lots of old software.
In Missouri, the state-wide records software has [had] a hard-coded backdoor password for the administrator account, and using it bypasses all logging features. The effected software is still deployed today, and was used everywhere from '94 thru my graduation. All it took was physical access to a machine with netware client or a network logon... heh.
I discovered this by downloading the executables (free) from the company's website and doing 'strings sism.exe | less'. Behold, 10 minutes into tinkering, I had a 0day vuln for every school in the state. Not just grades, but lunch money, too... everything.
-NIKOB. =).
Some schools don't even have IT staff or it's tacked on to someone job and is not done full time.
Honestly, it's not that hard. If you're changing them by hand on more than a few machines then you're doing it wrong.
When I was in high school we had a kinda similar situation, but nobody tried to change grades for profit. They just altered their own grades. Funny enough, I was the one that discovered the flaw. It was incredibly simple, they left a link to the administration backend on the site and didn't use authentication for any of the grade changes. I told the school about the issue, and they ignored me. Six months later a bunch of my friends started changing grades and we all got kicked out of school for two weeks.
I'd be willing to bet if this kid had just found they keys to the filing cabinet with all the permanent records and was changing grades for cash, they wouldn't be filing criminal charges...
WarGames 1983
"In the Pahrump Valley Times profile, Coyner says he dreamed of attending an Ivy league school like Harvard and that he wanted to become a hedge fund trader." No surprises here.
It doesn't matter under the law. If you enter my house and remove my property from it, it's irrelevant that you found the key under the mat - you're still guilty of breaking and entering and of theft.
(And no, my key isn't under the mat, I'm smarter than that. A fellow geocacher might find it, but not an ordinary burglar.)
Even basic things, like fairly well established 'net conventions have not penetrated very far. For example, many local Gov. officials send all caps emails (but then so does a fairly large % of the local populace).
Nevada in general, and Pahrump in particular, are among the nations lowest ranked in education. The Nevada educational systems are in desperate need of overhaul.
It is also worth noting that when arrested in his University of Nevada, Reno dorm, he had a stolen TV and equipment for making counterfeit drivers' licenses.
Here's a link to the local paper, with pictures and local comments; http://pvtimes.com/news/grade-change-scandal-rocks-pvhs/
A quote from the comments by "3rd year Engineering Student":
I think "3rd year Engineering Student" may need to check some definitions himself... but the pathetic part is that no one questions his expertise, or the definitions he offers.
Pahrump is a nice place in many ways, but it's also a lot like stepping back in time in many ways. The population is about 35,000, and it's about 50 miles from Las Vegas.
GOD is not a good password.
This happened at my high school years ago (aside from the grade selling). The student in question put keyloggers on a number of PC's in one lab trying to get a friend's Ragnarok Online password, but instead got the system admin login info. He was caught when his calculus teacher went to change the grade of one of her other students from the semester before and discovered his D- became a straight C.
Posting for reasons that will become clear...I may have shared this story as an AC in the past.
When I was a freshman, I guessed the password to the instructors application (which had been freely deployed to a PC in the library -- this was in '90, I think). I typed "teacher" for a username, and then had to think about the password choices... Well, I was attending [cityname] West High School. Most of us might say, "Yes, I go to West High". And of course everyone understood that. So after three other failed attempts, I typed "westhigh". Ta-da! In.
The app actually only controlled student registration for the different courses and had nothing to do with grades. But I made a mistake of showing a classmate, (we'd changed the password) who then continued to play in the app, screwing with stuff, we'd changing the password, and got caught. And of course he fingered me as being an accomplice. Asshole. We got off easy -- gave them the password so they could get back in (apparently, there's no main administrator password??) and paid a $50 "fine" directly to the school. No mark on my school record.
Indeed, I had a 4.25 GPA on a 4.0 scale way back in high school. I took a bunch of honours classes (chemistry, physics, calculus, english, US history) to get the extra grade points.
At least not in my opinion. My buddy did the same thing when we were in high school about 6 or 7 years ago. Booted up in Linux, copied the SAM file over, cracked it at home. Did it a few times until we found one that the administrator account had logged into. He was never caught until the end of the year because we decided to pull a prank and change the standard wallpaper for all the student accounts to this http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/7629/gib.png. He was caught because as it turns out, the system was setup to capture screenshots of anyone logged in every 10 seconds, combined with the fact that he signed in to the library to use the computer, they were able to catch him. I don't think they ever found out about changing some grades, but I'm not sure about that.
Seems smart to me, other than getting caught. If I could have changed grades in highschool/university, I would have. I cracked the password to a high level account in hs, but all it did was let me install applications and change other people's passwords.
Whoosh...
Pencil was the password Matthew Broderick's character used to break into his school's computer system in the movie Wargames.
Putting moderation advice in your
So how many fail points do I pick up for googling the phrase and still not getting it?
We were given an assignment to spend 45 minutes of (self-)learning about computer security.
I looked at WinNT security, then managed to change the Local Admin account's password, and finally walked down to IT to ask them to reset it (never figured out the original passwork). Was given a lecture about how this was reason for expelling me, which I turned around to a lecture on having proper security, and then reminded them that I was one of their best students.
Back in class we had to recount our 45 minutes for the rest of the class - teacher ended up with a completely blank look on his face after I told the class what I had learnt.
'nuff said ;-)
I don't see the issue here. We raise our children to believe that money is the most important thing in the world, and they act accrdingly. Why on earth would that surprise anyone?
The hedge fund thing just highlights the point.
Sure they would, they'd charge him with larceny, trespassing, etc.
In my day we had token-ring IBM machines all hooked into a netware setup. For those of you who don't know, there's a really serious exploit possible by faking out netware when running over token ring–something that would give you full admin privileges. I believe the packet interception tool was called Pandora, but it's been a long time.
Anyway, one could just go to Barnes and Noble, buy a book about security exploits, and be in business. I never went that far, but there was someone who posted some nasty things about child porn on the admin servers. I'm not sure if they actually used the token-ring method to get the password, but the idea behind what 4chan's /b/ is today was on the root writable part of the netware server at my school.
I found the problem and told the IT admin, who then asked me what the hell I was doing looking around at his filesystem. I told him it was world readable and that he had a bigger problem that he needed to deal with before he went after me. I'm not sure they ever found out who did it. They never bothered me about it after I told them.
The school official who left the grade system wide open should lose his/her job.
I would imagine he thinks of himself as a "professional"; therefore, hold him professionally accountable.
What school software is this that doesn't have a higher level of security for something as important as grade changes?
Heads should roll in the school district. Give the kids a second chance.
That is in addition to the fact that it seems to be remained the same "over the course of two semesters"
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
intelligent + duplicitous + brave + belief that he is above the law = top leadership position in government
I'm sure David Lightman was hoping for something in exchange for his services.
Awwwwwww yeah.
Police say Tyler Coyner, 19, was the ringleader in a group of 13 students who have been charged with conspiracy [...]
Conspiracy to do what? Or is just plain "conspiracy" enough to get you charged nowadays? "Theft" does not seem applicable, but it's a real crime at least, and "computer intrusion" sounds relevant enough, but what kind of crime exactly is "conspiracy"?
it wouldn't surprise me, i know where the students user/passwords sheets are for my school but thats because multipliable teachers(usually tech classes taught by gym teachers) have it to hand out whenever, without sending u to the office or tech guy or something, but just sitting unguarded most of the time.
im guessing it isn't much better for teachers, they may even have it in a back room and in a locked drawer
warning pointless sig
"In the Pahrump Valley Times profile, Coyner says he dreamed of attending an Ivy league school like Harvard [1] and that he wanted to become a hedge fund trader [2]."
[1] Not a fricking chance.
[2] Very good chance.
I wonder if this is one of those schools that gives its students laptops? There are schools in the area who have a wireless access point in almost every classroom. I had a friend who would bring his own laptop in, knock out the access point (not entirely sure how), and just man in the middle everyone in the room when they tried to reconnect to the router. Bam, every single kids password, including any teachers/administrator who also tried to reconnect. He got kicked out of the first school for changing grades (A to F will do that). But at the second school he never got caught, just change. Technology is great, but these schools don't do a very good job teaching their students how to use it safely.
This shows EVERYTHING that's wrong with our education system.
GOD FORBID some kid TAKES IT UPON HIMSELF to LEARN something valuble. Yeah, he shouldn't have been doing it in the first place. But why not offer him the opportunity to make good and show the IT tards in the school district how to fix it.
This kid obviously has a future in security, why not harness this energy for good as opposed to tossing him away and telling him he shouldn't use his talents. Finding each student's strong suit and harnessing that energy to get them into a good career should be the goal of education. Not passing bubble-fill tests and molding them into "good people"
Lord knows, half the kids on the student council at your local christian/catholic/private high school will die of alcohol poisoning at their first spring break of college anyway.
is getting caught
Cryonics - Keep cool and carry on.
You know, 25 years ago I managed to get a hold of a teacher's grade book. I modified my mark on one test, just because I was annoyed at having an overall average under 90%.
(We didn't have A or C grades, nor GPA... just a mean average of all tests in the year. 85% right, 97% right, etc)
Funny thing is, first -- he did not notice until a friend of mine kept saying 'doesn't that 8 look weird?' to the teacher. ;) It was all good fun, in that, we could not believe he had not noticed.
However, the downside was -- woha, the mark I changed were zeroed out. He felt that was punishment enough, in that, I had moved from 87% to 83% in terms of my new average.
How the *hell* does any of this result in criminal charges. My *god*, these are *kids*. Criminal charges?! Teenagers do *stupid* things. They do them on the spur of the moment. Punishment is required so one can learn that there are repercussions, but come on!
Suspend them for a week, if you must. Force them to donate the money to charity, or some such. Zero out all the grades they changed, if you must.
Call the police?! What is *wrong* with people?!
Do you mean that the horribly inefficient school system that relies on grades instead of actual knowledge makes it desirable to cheat for higher grades? Really!? What a surprise!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
In high school a buddy of mine did this. Put a keylogged on a teachers computer then logged in and changed our grades. He got busted but my grades never did :)
I'm paraphrasing Space Balls. You mod me down for that? What, are you pissed because somebody made a movie making fun of Star Wars? God, you guys live up to my signature and that's just sad.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
If by "future in security" you mean mall cop, then yes he does! He's talentless, lazy, moron. The only reason he did this is because he didn't actually want to learn anything. Hence the requirement to cheat.
I am semi surprised that DHS didn't b ecome involved and name everyone terrorists.
There is really a price to pay when you use your intelligence for bad things. Just look at what happened to these guys. :)
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When I was in high school I got a summer job with the district IT department installing computers.
Amusingly, the district IT admins decided to add my account to the domain administrators AD group (which gave us full access to every server in the district, including the ones with the grade databases). They also gave us the GGM key (which opened every lock in the district) and a sheet with the alarm codes to every school.
We didn't do anything, but that's a surprising amount of trust to place in a 16-year-old student with zero work experience. Especially considering that their total knowledge of me came from a 30 minute job interview.
Someone should tell them that not every computer NEEDS to be attached to a network all the time.
Hedge fund traders have never been accused of being ethical or trustworthy except by their defense attorneys.
:)
Sentence is entirely valid and works just fine. Your comment is just invalid
Why would you go to an Ivy League school to become a salesman who gambles for a living. Frankly, I think the biggest problem with professional gamblers like hedge fund traders and other financial traders in general is that instead of a cheap trading license (which I actually got when I was 19 after 1.5 weeks of studying part time, never used it, I don't approve of gambling), traders should be required to have a degree from a university with a specialization on statistics and probabilities.
So far as I can tell, the only justifiable reason to get an Ivy League education when becoming a 3rd party professional gambler is to find people to swindle while you drink and party at school.
Respect and trust is usually reciprocal and what is given is usually returned. Likewise, if you treat someone like a thief, they will steal from you.
Cheap storage VM.
Ok so he cheated through highschool (and got caught). That will allow him to get *some* minimum wage jobs in the future. Less if his charges stick to his record.
Now he still has to "manage" his way through college before most places will even look at his resume in the future. Assuming of course the colleges themselves don't see the cheating charges and decide to deny him.
He may look smug now but what he did was in reality the *opposite* of "smart". He screwed himself.
Good luck buddy!