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Florida Teen Charged With Felony Hacking For Changing Desktop Wallpaper
colinneagle writes: A 14-year-old middle school student in Holiday, Florida, was arrested this week and charged with "an offense against a computer system and unauthorized access," which is a felony. The student reportedly used an administrator password to log into a teacher's computer and change the background image to a photo of two men kissing.
The student also revealed his secrets after he was caught – the password was the teacher's last name, and the teacher had typed it in in full view of the students. The student said many other students used these administrators' passwords (their teachers' last names) so they can screen-share and video chat with other students. The student was briefly held in a nearby detention center, and the county Sheriff warned that other teenagers caught doing the same thing will "face the same consequences."
The student also revealed his secrets after he was caught – the password was the teacher's last name, and the teacher had typed it in in full view of the students. The student said many other students used these administrators' passwords (their teachers' last names) so they can screen-share and video chat with other students. The student was briefly held in a nearby detention center, and the county Sheriff warned that other teenagers caught doing the same thing will "face the same consequences."
The Windows logo in the Flying Windows screensaver was from the Wingdings font. Using Wordpad you could edit the screensaver binary and change the character that gets displayed to another one from that font. So at various times in the Win3.1 era people around me were found to have flying smiley faces, flying skull and crossbones etc.
If you mean the teacher, then I whole heartedly agree. We must make an example of the moronic teacher that used their password (and a galacticly stupid one at that) in front of the class.
The only person at fault is the teacher.
Kids will be kids - it was better to change a wallpaper to "show the teacher the error of their ways" than to bully some poor dumb jock.
The student observed the teacher's keyboard while the password was typed in. The student then used that observed password to unlawfully gain access to the system in question.
This has nothing to do with the wallpaper. The student leveraged unauthorized access to a system to do something.
Actually no it does not. That is called trespassing.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I think I'd have been put away for life, if I was younger and in the US, or possibly tasered, charged with assulting a cop's fist with my face then shot.
When I were a lad and the school computers ran Windows 95 (all spiffy and shiny and new they were), I created a trojan floppy which renamed and overwrote some key executables which autoexec.bat with my own ones. My ones passed on the arguments to the true ones so the boot process worked as usual and it was very hard to see that it was trojaned.
Of course they were set to "go off" on a certain date as a prank on a teacher who was being a dick and who many people had complained about and nothing changed.
All you had to do was slip in the floppy, reboot and it would install the trojan. Of course once word got around everyone wanted in on the act so I had to do very little of the legwork to trojan the entire computer lab.
I got a "yeah very funny (snigger) don't do that again mmmmkay?" talk.
And that was it.
Come to think of it I was always pissing around and hacking.
What is school if not a safe environment for kids to learn stuff and learn where the boundaries are?
Everyone involved in this charge should be hounded out of office and publicly shamed for being reprehensible humans.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
At least he didn't just take 8 bullets to the back.
You don't define who's trespassing on your property when they have a customary reason to be there. You can't take the mailman to court for trespassing, you can't take the police to court for chasing a suspect through your house and out a window, and you can't take a registered solicitor to court for trespassing (provided they leave as soon as you ask). If the fire department shows up with a reported emergency, they can bust in and there's not shit you can do about it. Building inspector? Same deal. Health inspector? Yep.
A registered solicitor leaving a flyer is NOT considered littering. You cannot win that in court. Ever try to get rid of Jehovah's Witnesses? They always leave shit. Good luck.
You don't define it. Trespassing is defined by the law, which allows you to take certain actions to encourage a certain set of people to leave, but it does not automatically mean that anyone who sets foot on your property is trespassing just because you don't like it.
TL;DR: The world is more nuanced than your "LALALALA FINGERS IN EARS" view of things.
In the defense of our continent sized nation, Florida is the laughing stock of America.
The law is screwed up. This isn't hacking. Hacking is when someone intrudes into a properly secured computer system containing high-valued data and conducts ransom, espionage, theft, damage in a large amount, such as stealing SSNs, identity theft, or intellectual property on which a business is based.
This is the equivalent of the teacher leaving the grade book unattended on his table instead of locking it in the desk and exits the room for a moment, and a student sneaks over to it and pencils in a lewd picture on the cover.
The kid is deserving of detention, and possibly suspension for petty vandalism, especially if there's an ongoing discipline issue.
No friggin' jail time or criminal charges for ordinary childish behavior.
If there's a crime; it should be misdemeanor for disorderly conduct in posting sexually explicit photos.
I can only speak for New York State; in NYS when charges are dropped/dismissed or the defendant acquitted you receive a canned "Order of Dismissal" from the court. This order provides that:
1. Records of the arrest held at the State level are sealed in almost all instances, with specified exemptions, one of which is pistol license applications. Apply for a NYS pistol license and they can and will obtain the sealed records.
2. All copies of fingerprints taken by the State are ordered to be destroyed or returned to the defendant.
3. The State Court asks the Feds to destroy any copies of records transmitted to them by the State of New York after your arrest.
The astute observer will note the bolded part of #3; virtually all local/state arrests in the United States are reported to the FBI by your State's clearinghouse. In New York State it's the Division of Criminal Justice Services. They usually transmit your fingerprints to the Feds too. If you think the Feds are deleting these records because some State Court asks (not orders) them to I've got a bridge to sell you.....
For what it's worth, the FBI won't disclose records in most instances, except to the applicable parties (i.e., you, via a FOIA request), so it's not something that will show up on a private background check. It will show up as part of any Federal background investigation (i.e., for a security clearance) and is almost certainly made available to State and Local law enforcement authorities.
Another thing to keep in mind: If you're asked whether or not you've ever been arrested and choose to lie about it you may well have committed a crime, depending on the circumstances. A verbal lie to a private citizen or employer? Most likely not a crime. A written lie, i.e., an employment application? In New York State it could be considered a forged instrument.
The other hole that exists is the public record. If you make the police blotter in the local paper it's almost certainly going to go online and get captured by Google. At that point there isn't a court in the world that's powerful enough to make it go away. The United States has no right to be forgotten, so that shit is going to be out there for your entire life, available to anyone who is smart enough to look for it.
In my particular case I was lucky, the police had it in their heads that I had information on co-conspirators, and they very deliberately kept it out of the blotter hoping that I would roll on them. The only records that exist of my arrest are held in Albany and Washington, available only under select circumstances, and I've yet to come across an employment application that asks about arrests. Most only care about convictions, and I answer "No" to that question in good faith.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.