What is Digg?Sponsored by Travelzoo
Take Advantage of Ridiculously Low Holiday Airfares view!
travelzoo.com - Flights $52 and up for Thanksgiving, Christmas & New Year. But move on it now.
117 Comments
- thetanbark, on 10/12/2007, -3/+170He didn't "hack" anything. The media assumes that any type of unauthorized computer access is "hacking" when really, if you RTFA, he used the login password of the "technology specialist" which he found WRITTEN ON A NOTEPAD IN THE ID GUY'S DESK! This is just plain stupidity on the sysadmin's side and an easy power-trip for a high school senior.
- Herolint, on 10/12/2007, -2/+79@nipuL
No it isn't. I would hardly call finding a username and password on a piece of paper and then using them to log in and change grades "hacking".
More appropriately, he was engaged in the nefarious practice that is known throughout the computing industry as "finding a username and password on a piece of paper and then using them to log in and change grades for some of his friends".
While this practice is nefarious, to say the least, if he tried to use it as an example of his "hacking" skills at next year's Defcon conference, at best it would get him a punch in the face. At worst, somebody might punch him in the face and steal his pants. - patience, on 10/12/2007, -3/+45"Voted most likely to be president of the US"
He has the ethics of a politician, thats for sure.
He is a class act. He took one for the team.
Now he may be taking it from a team. - felchdonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+38Well, duh. Anyone who's watched War Games knows the password to the school computer is always written down in the desk near the principal's office.
- NikoKun, on 10/12/2007, -3/+35schools are remarkably stupid when it comes to computers...
When I desided to do my programing homework in the school library one day... I got kicked out because they tought I was hacking... -_- - Eleo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+32He should probably be expelled, but prison is just over the top. What did he do, help some kids get into college? How horrible.
- Herolint, on 10/12/2007, -1/+24You obviously haven't been to public school lately. Fun == Evil.
At the last parent teacher conference I went to, the teacher pulled out a folder and before anything else showed me a yellow piece of paper (better known as the dreaded "Yellow Slip" I suppose). He showed it to me and said, "Your daughter received a yellow slip last week for (minor pause for effect) chewing something in class". Then he looked around as if waiting for an orchestral crescendo followed by a cymbal crash or a purposeful bonk of a timpani.
My first response was, "So?"
He also informed me that she talks too loud during lunch.
I think public school teachers need to stop being a bunch of whiny hippies. - elnerdo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+22I would've left a note on the computer about how they should fix their security problem.
Then again, I also wouldn't say 'lol' - danielrh9, on 10/12/2007, -3/+24As far as I can tell, he's being a good class president and watching out for the well being of his class.
If you want to talk about dramatic changes, the valedictorian of my senior class ended up smugging drugs and selling pot out of a Wal-Mart pharmacy department. She was an ***** anyways, and ended up filling everyone's expectations. - ChronicColonic, on 10/12/2007, -45/+63He may be expelled from school, but he will be guaranteed a high paying job in a IT security position.
- jus1haz2, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18We were having internet problems in class one day and i went into cmd and typed ipconfig in order to see if i had good ip or apipa and like 6 students were ZOMG! hacker.. i was like w-t-f morons....
- artanis, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16He certainly wasn't smart enough to change anyone's grade.
- chicken101, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16pshhh...
the password is 'pencil'. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14@mabhatter:
Not as bad as my experience. I was building a package from source on my laptop at lunch one day, and was taken to the principal's office for unauthorized computer use. I tried to explain that I couldn't have been on the network, since there are no switches in the lunchroom, and we don't have wireless. She had the "hackers can get around that kind of stuff" mentality. Luckily, the only Linux-using teacher in the school was in the office, and he confirmed that I was in fact building the latest Thunderbird, not hacking into the school's network. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16Since when is hacking, reading something on notepad?
- dignation, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15Schools are pretty stupid about security. At my high school they host the email on their own servers, this would be ok except for the fact that you can telnet to that server, log on as root with the password toor, and access everyone's email. Not that i've done anything like that...
- nonannystate, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Right on! Hell, we've all just hacked into DIGG! Woohoo! We all must be really talented *****!
- Bosox958, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14this is bs
cant a guy have any fun anymore - Chesh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Evidently the definition of "hacking" has changed considerably in the past several years, by using a password I am now a hacker.
Interesting article none the less, now excuse me while I go hack my email to read my messages, after that I'll hack into my files from work and get some stuff done for tomorrow. - trubbleshute, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11"but he will be guaranteed a high paying job in a IT security position." yeah, because getting a password takes skill. If he actually hacked the system it'd be pretty cool.
- jus1haz2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11"herolint"
At least you didn't flip out at your daughter like alot of parents would. - bordo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11its his own fault for a) getting caught and b) letting way to many people in on it. if he had just played it cool and not changed the grades of 19 HIGH SCHOOL students, he might have gotten away with it...
- rmclaughlin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10i almost got in touble today for running cmd on a school computer
- john2kx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Oh *****... pull over, bordo, it's the grammar police!!
- dignation, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9the "security problem" was that someone wrote down their password and left it on the desk.
There's no patch for human stupidity, my friend - nonannystate, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Having a login and password is by default having access to the system. If left in plain view, then the system was obviously meant to be accessed.
@herolint: Sort of off-topic but related to the Borg-types at schools who are calling this event "hacking" There are so many examples of idiotic school administrators/teachers/counselors, where to start? One example..I have a friend whose son has ausbergers (mild functioning autism). The kid is an artist like you wouldn't believe (these types often excel extraordinarily at one thing). The art teacher gave him an **F** because he didn't draw his assignment in the method spelled out in an art book. Did Michaelangelo have a ***** methodical art book? Isn't that just the purest antithesis of art? This kid's been so beaten down by Nurse Ratchett style teachers, he barely enjoys art anymore...which is probably his best shot at societal functioning.
I have a trillion stories of my own but I am saving them for my book. It'll be called "How Public Schools Destroy the Really Smart Kids and Cater to the Passivity of 98 IQs" - mabhatter, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I thought breaking into private places (whe needs privacy), using false credials (pretexting) and giving benifits to your buddies (Halliburton) what govt was all about... sounds like the student has got the govt message just right!! Way to punish the smart kids!!
- Herolint, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10I don't know if he even did that.
Maybe it was just me, but I never once was asked what my high school grades were when I entered into college. They seemed more interested in my money than what I received for a grade in Jazz Band.
Of course, I lived in Japan for several years after high school and didn't start going to college until I was 22 or 23. Might have had something to do with it. Don't know. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Knowing a password =/= hacking.
You people are retarded. - alacava, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7OK, I can't believe this made it to digg. I went to that high school and the secuirty was good until one of th Assistant Prinicpal left. Hs wife was one of the directors of technology. I can't tell you how many time I was call into his office because of something that looked like haking.
In fact, my brother's grades were one of the ones that were changed. The dumb part on the student is that most of the grades he changed were grades of student's whose parents worked for the school district (some of the parents were assistant prinicpals, princpal, and even higher then that), so the parents would of noticed. Also, the person in change of the database should of never given the tech person System Admin login to it (it's two sperate jobs). - Justice101, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10If he actually did "hack" the schools computer system (which it appears that the lay media has blown out of proportion) I would have fired the schools IT guy and gave this kid a job.
- titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11Let alone know what a grade was.
- insomniac8400, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Expelling a good student is dumb. The best solution is to tell staff to not write passwords down, and let the kid finish the school year. Nothing is solved by putting him in jail/expelling him. Plus if it's the school that is making up this hacker thing (which most likely it is since anyone working at a high school by default knows nothing about computers or technology), he needs to lawyer up and get a couple million out of them. Finding a password makes the guy who wrote it down a dumbass, it doesn't make you a hacker.
- jcaino, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6being that he was the class pres 3 years running and that he was voted most likely to become US president, I highly doubt this kid has much of a record, if anything at all
this will not result in jail-time - no way, no how. not even with a ***** lawyer.
at the most he will get federal probation.
at best (best for him) he will get a pre-trial diversion.
i'm betting on the latter. - insomniac8400, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6That's exactly what I thought when I read,
"Cooper City High's bookkeeper told investigators that in the week before the grades were changed she witnessed Shrouder in the office of the computer technology specialist looking for a "sign-on" password to the district network. The technology specialist had left his passwords on a notepad in his desk, according to the report." - nonannystate, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Social hacking? WTF? Hacking is a black and white thing. Hacking is access to a system by means of exploiting technolgical weaknesses. Anything else is simply "unauthorized access." If he had "hacked" the username and password with a brute force attack (for example, he wrote a program that entered in common passwords based on a known username pattern like first initial last name repeatedly until he got a match), THAT'S hacking. And still, a system that allows such an attack deserves to be 'hacked' but that's another story.
But finding it? Written down on a notepad? Come on... - dgh1973, on 10/12/2007, -8/+13"No he won't- the moron got caught!"
So did Mitnik and Poulson, didn't stop them from becoming famous and well paid. - Rooker156, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5that sure would be an interesting read.
- t3hX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I was playing the game "Uplink" in a computer lab... ( http://www.uplink.co.uk/ )
... need I say the rest. Although, after a few minutes, common sense prevailed, and somebody actually believed me that it was a game :) - TheUnashamed, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I want that book.
- Pebcak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4This reminds me of back when I was 13...
It was 1996. I was barely weaned off of a shell account and had just started using PPP with Winsock and Netscape. A friend of mine came up to me one day and told me my password for my Internet account at our local ISP. Okay, so I was intrigued with how he did it, but he wouldn't tell me. I was determined to figure it out, so that afternoon after school I spent a lot of time messing around and searching around my ISP's filesystem. I found a windows directory on their Unix system, and after some more searching, I found a file that had the system admin's login name .pwd. Interesting, I thought. So I used Alta-Vista and looked up pwd files. Turns out that it was a Windows password file and there was a crack for it!!
So I downloaded the crack, ran it on the file, and I got a password. The ISP also had a link to their admin page at the bottom of their main page (big boo-boo). Well I went to this admin page and tried the login/password and they worked. Suddenly I, as a 13 year-old tenor barely able to get pimples yet had access to every aspect of user accounts for the entire ISP. I mean minutes usage, billing, plaintext passwords, and even plaintext credit card numbers (wow, mistake after mistake). I didn't do anything with the information except tell my friend what his password was...
...so finally he told me what he did. I had checked my email on his computer and he had a keystroke log running. Doh! Oh well, I showed him. Except that word got out and I ended up having a meeting with the police, the ISP owners, and my parents. I only ended up do some community service by making a web site for the local police department. X-D
At that time the police in my area had never dealt with such a crime so really no one knew what to do with me back then. Gosh, things are so different now. - richpav, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@Herolint Years from now when your daughter is a gum-chewing, loudmouth crack addict doing 15 to 20 for armed robbery, you'll wish you had heeded her teacher's warning.
But seriously, some suburban schoolteachers need to spend a few months in an inner-city school to get their priorities straight. - Punisher2K, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I wish people would learn the difference between cracking and hacking. Drives me ***** nuts.
This was neither. It was "social engineering" at best. - adiggtion, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"Ferris Bueller, you're my hero!" ;-)
- Pebcak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Sorry to be replying to my own comment, but I just remembered another instance when I was like 14 and was taking a "Tech" class. It was more of a shop / vocational skills class. There was one station though that involved using a computer which was running Windows 3.1. I finished the work early and was pretty bored, so I started to tink around. It had qbasic.exe! I started to demonstrate a small program for my friend next to me--something like just drawing a few circles on the screen randomly and my teacher saw it. He was instantly really upset because he had no idea wtf I had done. I explained it to him calmly what I was doing and he stopped, and with a red face and a low voice he said ..."I never want to see you do that again."
Hehehe - KesshoRyu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@NikoKun:
Actually the computer security in my school is surprisingly good. I've tried to program in classes other than programming and they yelled at me too. They just don't understand. - synystar, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6He was voted most likely to be President of the United States. Doesn't surprise me. Seems about right actually... by today's standards you might say he's well on his way.
Edit: yeah .. what patience said. - mabhatter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3changing the grades was too much.. but he's a high school kid, he had them at the tech's password on a sticky note!! Just HAVING that would cause enough greif... the catch would be to keep the note... so the tech can't log on (?!) then casually write it on a bunch of chalk boards without saying what it is... then you have deniability that you never used it and didn't break any laws! And a lot of egg on somebody ELSE'S face.
- h0dg3s, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I would have told him not to bother me over trivial nonsense like that again.
- hackwrench, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Someone should arrest everyone associated with No Child Left Behind with intent to defraud.
-
Show 51 - 100 of 117 discussions
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is