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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.
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.
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.