3 ms·

Did something similar in the late 90’s / early aughts. Figured out the default password scheme for teachers. Found several teacher accounts that didn’t change

Did something similar in the late 90’s / early aughts. Figured out the default password scheme for teachers. Found several teacher accounts that didn’t change their default password. Teacher accounts could write to network drives when students couldn’t. Put games like it, quake 2 and c&c ra2 on the network. Lasted about six months. A student I had confided in ratted me out. I was no longer permitted to touch another school computer. I failed every class that required me to use a school computer. Despite the fact I brought my own laptop to school, they wouldn’t let me use it. Formal education and I never got along after that.

stallmanite 8y ago
That's ridiculous, maybe I'm over-involved with my kids but I'd think your parents would go to bat for you in that one. The school making you fail other classes over that is unacceptable
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  There's a reason why "The Mentor"'s Hacker Manifesto has disdain for schools. I've had similar things happen at high school. Still, anecdote. Unless your parents can and will sue, the public schools (SPIT) will do as they choose.
- godzillabrennus 8y ago
  They tried. I wasn't exactly a stellar student anyway. We switched me to another school district to finish out high school. I'm convinced that I would have had a more useful education if I had dropped out, moved to Silicon Valley, and lived out of a van working for minimum wage at a startup than if I had finished high school.
smcl 8y ago
I had a similar ban from using my high school's computing equipment for an even tamer reason - sending messages to my friend in the same classroom using "net_send", which the school claimed DDOS'd their network and blew it out of proportion like I was some hardcore out of control hacker.
- ewoodrich 8y ago
  I was given 20 hours of "community service" (school punishment, total joke) in middle school after discovering the messaging feature in Novell (the admin didn't disable it). For a couple weeks the school was absolutely convinced my friend and I were responsible for taking a few computer labs in the district offline and claimed we created a virus.
  - smcl 8y ago
    I suspect we both had the same frustrating conversation with our head teacher :-)
    - godzillabrennus 8y ago
      I was suspended for three days in a separate incident at another school system I started going to the following year for using Winpopup to send messages.

stallmanite 8y ago

That's ridiculous, maybe I'm over-involved with my kids but I'd think your parents would go to bat for you in that one. The school making you fail other classes over that is unacceptable

crankylinuxuser 8y ago
There's a reason why "The Mentor"'s Hacker Manifesto has disdain for schools. I've had similar things happen at high school. Still, anecdote. Unless your parents can and will sue, the public schools (SPIT) will do as they choose.
godzillabrennus 8y ago
They tried. I wasn't exactly a stellar student anyway. We switched me to another school district to finish out high school. I'm convinced that I would have had a more useful education if I had dropped out, moved to Silicon Valley, and lived out of a van working for minimum wage at a startup than if I had finished high school.

smcl 8y ago

I had a similar ban from using my high school's computing equipment for an even tamer reason - sending messages to my friend in the same classroom using "net_send", which the school claimed DDOS'd their network and blew it out of proportion like I was some hardcore out of control hacker.

ewoodrich 8y ago
I was given 20 hours of "community service" (school punishment, total joke) in middle school after discovering the messaging feature in Novell (the admin didn't disable it). For a couple weeks the school was absolutely convinced my friend and I were responsible for taking a few computer labs in the district offline and claimed we created a virus.
- smcl 8y ago
  I suspect we both had the same frustrating conversation with our head teacher :-)
  - godzillabrennus 8y ago
    I was suspended for three days in a separate incident at another school system I started going to the following year for using Winpopup to send messages.