digg

Facebook Connect Join Digg About

Teen used 'Dummies' book to hack school computers

sheboygan-press.com — Police searching the residence of a 15-year-old boy who admitted hacking into the Little Chute School District's computers found a copy of the book "Internet for Dummies." "He was self-taught and self-motivated in that regard," said Lt. Ray Lee of the Fox Valley Metro Police Department.

Who dugg this? Made popular Mar 29, 2008

Digg DudeWhat is Digg?

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. Digg surfaces the best stuff as submitted and voted on by the community. Take the Tour to learn more.

97 Comments

show profanity settings
expand all
  • ibatman, on 03/29/2008, -2/+127The school district should fire the IT admin and hire this kid on.
  • Dhalamar, on 03/29/2008, -0/+98I remember my school trying to say I "hacked" their library computer back in the mid 90's or so when I showed the librarian how the kids were getting past Net Nanny to look at porn. CTRL-ALT-DEL. They wanted to suspend me for a week.
  • imacommi, on 03/29/2008, -2/+87I can't imagine they think a teen would learn this at a black hat conference... OF COURSE HE IS SELF TAUGHT
  • xshepx, on 03/29/2008, -1/+75Who in their right mind would believe that an individual would be able to ever learn anything on their own? I shudder to imagine a world where people don't have to pay enormous amounts of money to be given instruction on how to perform skilled or creative tasks. Just think of the confusion and devastation that could be caused by such 'do it yourselfers.'
  • meltingrobot, on 03/29/2008, -0/+58Self-teaching is easy. It's that whole self-motivation thing that's the trouble of getting past.
  • numberneal, on 03/29/2008, -1/+41i hope he gave himself straight 'A's in every class.
  • RedHerringHack, on 03/29/2008, -1/+38Normals suck. They are so timid and easily frightened.
  • UrlorJkron, on 03/29/2008, -0/+30So what exactly did he do?
  • 1SockChuck, on 03/29/2008, -5/+33Imagine if he'd upgraded from "Internet for Dummies" to "Hacking for Dummies."
  • Millsee, on 03/29/2008, -0/+28How about a nice game of global thermo-nuclear war?
  • acrodev, on 03/29/2008, -2/+28"I learned how hack into the school's computers based on two instructional movies on TBS... WarGames and The Net"
  • H2Glitch2007, on 03/29/2008, -0/+25Internet for dummies aka "Google"
  • FDDIcent, on 03/29/2008, -0/+22It cost the district several thousand dollars and a lot of time to do the fixes," Lee said.

    fixes? you mean, making the updates to your network's security that you should've made in the first place?
  • Vanquiz, on 03/29/2008, -0/+19"It cost the district several thousand dollars and a lot of time to do the fixes,"
    So, they called Geek Squad ?
  • cazbar, on 03/29/2008, -0/+18What did he do? Install logmein on a computer?

    Amazing what some people consider a severe security breach these days.
  • robthom, on 03/29/2008, -0/+17These kids today with their videogames!
  • Audacitor, on 03/29/2008, -0/+16boy: here, your grades are better
    girl: omg, you're so unethical.
    boy: oh, bye
    girl: no wait, now I find unethical sexy!
    boy: cool. let's blow up the world by accident...
  • tenjin1, on 03/29/2008, -1/+16The punishment shouldn't be so severe on the kid, I mean if it's the schools fault for having lame security or not locking it down properly. Unless, that is, the boy did some serious stuff while in the schools system, like decimate files, change grades, etc, then yes, I can see some sort of severe punishment.

    I think the kid probably learned a valuable lesson from this experience - Learn to cover your tracks before hacking into a database :D
  • EvilFerret, on 03/29/2008, -0/+15Inaccurate. He taught himself how to do it, at one point he got the book (probably years ago). The book did not teach him how to hack his school computers. I'd also like to point out the dummies books are often incredibly resourceful. I wouldn't be surprised if Internet for Dummies was actually just a re-worded Net+ guide.
  • Harrison88, on 03/29/2008, -1/+14This is probably more a case of a crap security setup (password = password) than the kid being a good "hacker".
  • ToastPop, on 04/17/2009, -0/+10I got banned from my school computers in elementary school, and all the IT guy did was change my password to "blocked". I couldn't believe it worked when I tried it! So I still used the school computers for the rest of the year.
  • ChristBehemoth, on 03/29/2008, -2/+12Dummies FTW
  • krnldmp, on 03/29/2008, -0/+9Should be perfectly legal.
  • Jeffler, on 03/29/2008, -0/+9As long as he's not playing with the WOPR I hope so too.
  • Ogedei, on 03/29/2008, -0/+9I especially found the code typos in Java for dummies helpful.
  • inactive, on 03/29/2008, -1/+10Holy crap it actually exists.

    http://www.amazon.com/Hacking-Dummies-Kevin-Beaver ...
  • Berkana, on 03/29/2008, -0/+9I have a hard time believing that "the internet for dummies" would have enough info to learn how to break computer security. Maybe Hacking Exposed or some other infosec book, but the Dummies book just doesn't cover enough to be able to do any significant hacking. What chapter did he refer to?
  • DerGeist, on 03/29/2008, -0/+7TRUSTED PLATFORM MODULE!!!
  • Ogedei, on 03/29/2008, -1/+8Well they did say they had to spend 1000s of dollars on repairs, so we have to assume he didn't just look around.

    Lame security does not make breaking into the system ok. If I have a lock on my door, and my neighbor has alarms and razor wire, my security is lame and by that logic my house is ok to break into. ***** dat.
  • moneyswears, on 03/29/2008, -0/+7It must've taken some l33t haxxoring to penetrate the pillar of security that is no doubt the Little Chute public school board.
  • malman4, on 03/29/2008, -0/+7If we told you, you would just get in trouble too...............
  • inactive, on 03/29/2008, -0/+6Really? I just did what the title said. =X
  • quarkie, on 03/29/2008, -0/+6Who didn't get banned in high school for "hacking"? I used the "open file" command in microsoft word to browse to the C drive (it didn't show up in Windows explorer) and made a shortcut to a different application in Windows.

    I don't even remember the program but it was basically windows explorer with a really old UI and it didn't have all the restrictions that Windows Explorer did. People kept on losing temp word files due to stupidity and I was trying to help them get them back.
  • moneyswears, on 03/29/2008, -0/+6Teachers are notorious for using remote desktop with a weak password. Figuring this out with the help of "Internet for Dummies" fails to impress me.
  • inactive, on 03/29/2008, -3/+9Not that smart if he got caught now is he.
  • zantos420, on 03/29/2008, -0/+6FTA: "It cost the district several thousand dollars and a lot of time to do the fixes," Lee said.

    Well maybe if you didn't hire the english teachers nephew to install your network and actually hired someone with basic intelligence of networking you wouldn't have this problem in the first place. The reason you got hosed is because you cut corners. Learn your lesson or are you still going to leave your usr/pwd admin/admin?
  • threemagic, on 03/29/2008, -0/+5you mean other than the guy right above you?
  • lamiaconfitor, on 03/29/2008, -0/+5is anyone else thinking of the first hacking scene from "wargames?"
  • Magistrate, on 03/29/2008, -0/+5I concur. They shouldn't be complaining about time and money spent on something that should have been done in the first place.

    Seriously, if you can learn to hack a school network with a 'Internet For Dummies' book, your school network wasn't that secure in the first place.
  • skillled1, on 03/29/2008, -2/+7i would like to see you do it.
  • jackyyll, on 03/29/2008, -0/+5You'd be surprised how many subject the "for dummies" line has.. blogging for dummies, hacking for dummies, rick rolling for dummies, rape for dummies.. wait what?
  • rodrigo74, on 03/29/2008, -0/+4War Games
  • skillled1, on 03/29/2008, -0/+4It's the schools fault for not implementing common updates to their security program. Good for that kid.
  • FloMonster, on 03/29/2008, -0/+4I work in the IT department for a high school district, and I see teachers freak out over stuff like this all the time. One business teacher wanted to suspend a student for "hacking" the file server, when all he was doing was browsing. Another time she went ape ***** after a student set a BIOS password on one of the machines in the room. I hadn't realized that my predecessor had done a ***** job when setting up her lab; I spoke with the student, asked him not to modify settings on any machines, and gave him a warning. Then I went through the entire lab checking the security settings on the machines.
    Sometimes you need to look at your own quality of work, before you blame someone for "hacking" your network. Take responsibility for your screw ups, and move on.
  • roflcopters, on 03/29/2008, -0/+4I think that if you get hacked, it's your own fault. You should have spent a little more time making sure a kid with a book can't hack your system.
  • MattBD, on 03/29/2008, -0/+4Personally I think Steal This Computer Book is a better purchase.
  • Herald42, on 03/29/2008, -0/+3No.
  • ChaosProfessor, on 03/29/2008, -0/+3as a school network guy I would be ashamed of it and not press charges so this didn't get out into the word
  • inactive, on 03/29/2008, -0/+3The password was "pencil"

    Clearly books need to be banned.
  • Lutremi, on 03/29/2008, -0/+3My school would be awesome if it had wifi =|
  • Fetching more discussions...
    Show 51 - 96 of 96 discussions

  • Add a Comment

    Login or register to comment!
    Or, sign-in super fast with your Facebook account ...

© Digg Inc. 2009 — Content created and posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain | Terms of Use Updated | Privacy Policy
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.