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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."
One time, I used a command prompt instruction to circumvent the 'security' our high school computer lab teacher had used to prevent students from accessing the Control Panel in Windows 3.1. The mouse tracking speed had been set too high, and the computer was difficult to use, so I fixed it. The teacher accused me of "hacking" and I was kicked out of the computer lab for the rest of the school year. That teacher probably still runs a computer lab; I grew up and went to work for Microsoft. I hope this kid is as lucky.
Yes, but this isn't in public. The fact that they had easily learned the password and were regularly using it isn't the same as it being "in public".
No, but where is the "crime"? where I live, a student messing with a background image might get some harsh words. Set it to something pornographic, and they might even get a lowered grade. Hacking in order to cheat on exams might get them expelled - but still no police involvment.
There are people who have seen this pattern and are doing something about it:
http://www.seattletimes.com/se...
I'm hoping the numbers prove that it can be expanded to the many other places where simply jailing the offender doesn't make the world a better place.
I'm with you.
He had already been busted and slapped on the wrist:
Green had previously received a three-day suspension for accessing the system inappropriately. Other students also got in trouble at the time, he said. It was a well-known trick, Green said, because the password was easy to remember: a teacher's last name. He said he discovered it by watching the teacher type it in.
The only problem here is that he's being charged with a felony, because hacking laws on the books don't make a distinction between "petty" hacking and "grand" hacking. There's no shoplifting equivalent on the hacking books; it's all grand theft auto.
The teacher needs reprimanded by his IT department and his leadership (principal, union, whatever).
The kid needs his wrist slapped, and and county attorney needs to decide not to file charges, charge him with some sort of misdemeanor mischief charge instead.
I actually had this happen to me in 7th grade. Another student realized that we could use a password cracking program (I think windows would save pw files) to crack local user account passwords. First of all this is back in the days when windows 95 had horrific security such as storing user account passwords in a file that any user could access. :P And what would happen is that when you logged into Novell windows would often then prompt you for a local user account as well. And almost everybody would type in their their regular username and password to each machine. Well the other student cracked the schools system administrator's password and it was surprise surprise his first name plus like 123.
So for the first time in known history at our school, we finally had several administrators who actually could manage the computers. We changed the desktop resolution from like 640x480 up to a "modern" 1024x768 on all of the machines. We were able to fix teacher machines which weren't working. The "system administrator" at our school's solution to everything was just format and re-install. Which is probably cost-effective for him but not ideal for teachers who would have to reinstall all of their software.
We also had a little bit of fun, using remote desktop software on friends to trick them into thinking that Microsoft Word had a sentient chat bot that they had unlocked. Or moving a file around on their desktop when they were about to click on it so they would have to chase it around.
Well the fun all came crashing down when the system administrator went on vacation and came back to notice that he had apparently "worked" throughout his vacation logging into various systems. My friend who initially cracked his password had been dumb enough to log in as himself, and then 2 seconds later as the admin, then back in as himself again. The admin perfectly sensibly went to the principle, who unfortunately though was 80 years old and completely clueless on technology. The admin filled the principle's heads with "felony hacking" and warned him that we could change our grades (We all had 4.0+ GPAs anyway so...) and also that we could change all of the accountant's books. Which might have been true but... which to me raised questions as to why the IT manager gave himself access to the entire school's accounting records. So the principle called us each in one by one. Told us (without a representative or parent) that we could either as 12 year olds consent to something like 80 hours of community service at the school over the next year or else they would press felony charges against us. We of course all started balling one by one and folded.
After that the teachers would ask us to fix their computers because they but we just had to shrug our shoulders and say "sorry, the school says if we fix your computer we'll face felony charges." Needless to say the computers returned to their shitty unmaintained state. The principle apologized to us a couple years later and said he over-reacted.
This case, the woman who got 20 years for (possibly inducing) miscarriage, the guy who built a fort from cardboard boxes in his yard for his kids and was told by the city to remove it, all in the last few days -- I think they call for this quote from Jack Tramiel (of Commodore) when he asked how he could not hate Germans after having been in Auschwitz:
"You know," he once told me, "it's hard to believe it really happened. But it can happen again. In America. Americans like to make rules, and that scares me. If you have too many rules you get locked in a system. It's the system that says this one dies and that one doesn't, not the people. That's why I don't hate the German people. Individuals, yes. Rules, yes. But not all Germans." He shrugged. "They just obeyed the rules. But that's why we need more Commodores. We need more mavericks, just so the rules don't take over."
The amount of times I played similar pranks on lesser knowledgeable students while in college should have put me behind bars for 3 life sentences.
Yet, I have grown to be a responsible family man.
Maybe if i would have been put in jail for such things i would have been a hardened criminal by now.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)