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I remember the time I "hacked" my school library's computers. I changed the homepage on the browsers to my Geocities blog (this was almost 15 years ago). Later

I remember the time I "hacked" my school library's computers. I changed the homepage on the browsers to my Geocities blog (this was almost 15 years ago). Later that day I was pulled from class by a security guard. In the library was most of campus security and most of the administrative staff. They were sure that I had put my blog on their servers and destroyed their website. They even had some teacher from the computer lab who couldn't seem to figure it out. Once I showed them how to change the homepage back (there was a tense moment when their server took forever to respond) they stopped threatening to have me arrested and made me sit quietly at a table until the period was over.

mrcharles 16y ago
We'd just put a batch file attached to autoexec on our school computers which prompted with Cannot read C:\ Abort, Retry, Fail?, and then we made batch files for A, R, and F which just printed "Error" or something similar. It was pretty awesome watching the "computer expert" claim the harddrives had died and needed to be replaced.
- illumin8 16y ago
  I did something similar - I had TSR programs written for DOS that "simulated" viruses. They simulated viruses like Cascade (where all of the characters on your screen would fall to the bottom and lie in a pile every few minutes) but didn't actually replicate. I put this in the autoexec.bat file on every computer in the lab during my Pascal programming class. The next class was a word processing class. Apparently the FBI was called to investigate when the computer teacher couldn't figure out that it wasn't a real virus. I wasn't really punished because I hadn't done any damage, but my parents got called. As usual, someone with limited computer skills that can't get a better job somewhere else, ends up teaching computers for slightly more than minimum wage. We used to have a lot of fun on the Novell network as well when the IT guy (think comic book guy from the Simpsons in real life) would walk away from his desk and leave it logged in. We would give ourselves admin and wreak havoc for a few hours until he noticed there was more than one superuser.
  - thaumaturgy 16y ago
    > As usual, someone with limited computer skills that can't get a better job somewhere else, ends up teaching computers for slightly more than minimum wage. Statements like this make me rage a bit; students have to put up with non-technical teachers in part because precious few people in the high-tech sector can be moved to do teaching work in their community. It's as much our fault as anyone else's.
    - nowarninglabel 16y ago
      As a counterpoint, I had a teacher with limited computer skills who taught 'keyboarding' in middle school. Given that I was already at 80wpm, he decided to let me use the school's brand new computer lab next door during class hours, as long as I reported back with what use I put the computers too. So, not all non-technical teachers teaching computer classes are bad.
    - illumin8 16y ago
      Fair enough, but the comment is not meant to denigrate the teacher. I would much rather see a system that paid teachers appropriate salaries for their skill sets so that they could get qualified educators instead of the least common denominator. Why should qualified high-tech people work for substandard salaries? You can say out of the goodness of our hearts, but if the service they provide is valuable enough, and I think it is, they should be compensated appropriately.
      - thaumaturgy 16y ago
        Clifford Stoll has explained this far better than I could [1], but aside from the sheer intrinsic value and altruism of taking time out to be an amazing teacher for some students, it can also serve some really practical benefits: if you want the next generation of adults to have a firm grasp of science and technical issues -- whether they later operate a cash register, enter a career in politics, or build the next Amazon -- then it makes sense for us to find the time to teach these skills to students. If you want open source software to take over the world, teach programming to kids. If you want sensible social policies where science and technology are concerned, then teach science and technology to kids. If you want more rational discourse in the future, then teach logic to kids. Saying, "this is somebody else's job" -- even if you're also saying that it's a valuable job and they should be compensated well for it -- is not just self-serving, it's short-sighted. [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj8IA6xOpSk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj8IA6xOpSk
- waynecolvin 16y ago
  It's not the same as this story but I gamed Algebra II in in high school. It was last class of the day, the teacher was a track coach and most of us were in sports. Since time was short near the end of the year we all got permission to work at our own pace... As a C+ student in Algebra I quickly did the minimum on assignments in order to take more tests more often working far past in the book than we would have reached. I turned in crap of course but the total extra credit added up real good! ;) The teacher knew what I was pulling and even had to specify certain minimums, but went along with it nicely. (Other than never telling me just how high my grade finally was. Probably ~105%.)
Locke1689 16y ago
This never made sense to me. Back in freshman/sophomore year of high school I was pretty dumb and a little "grey hat" (just exploring, really). I would spend my spare time writing stack buffer overflows and of course had an Administrator account password to every computer in the network. Why would you do something so trivially traceable to you? I tended to do things more useful and under the radar like install CVS for my CS class.
- ryanelkins 16y ago
  Why would you do something so trivially traceable to you? Mostly because I didn't think it was a big deal. I mean, I changed the default homepage, I wasn't trying to format the drive or actually do anything that could be considered harmful. I didn't feel like I had to hide what I was doing. It's not like when I took "keyboarding" (it's like typing! but on computers!) and had to type some long paragraph 20 times. Typing it once and then copy-pasting 19 times was more "wrong" in my book.
megablast 16y ago
On the old BBC micros, I wrote a script that would loop through all possible passwords and try to log into the teachers password. Nothing was stored on computers in those days, so it wasn't such a big thing. I got busted, had to go to the Principle, and despite explaining that it would have taken approximately 2 years to loop through all possibilities, he still threatened suspension.
- salvadors 16y ago
  On the BBC's Econet system unless a machine was 'protected', any other machine on the network had access to its RAM - including the keyboard buffer. So it was fairly easy to get access to the teacher's password, especially if they always used the same machine and you could make sure in advance to unprotect it!

mrcharles 16y ago

We'd just put a batch file attached to autoexec on our school computers which prompted with Cannot read C:\ Abort, Retry, Fail?, and then we made batch files for A, R, and F which just printed "Error" or something similar. It was pretty awesome watching the "computer expert" claim the harddrives had died and needed to be replaced.

illumin8 16y ago
I did something similar - I had TSR programs written for DOS that "simulated" viruses. They simulated viruses like Cascade (where all of the characters on your screen would fall to the bottom and lie in a pile every few minutes) but didn't actually replicate. I put this in the autoexec.bat file on every computer in the lab during my Pascal programming class. The next class was a word processing class. Apparently the FBI was called to investigate when the computer teacher couldn't figure out that it wasn't a real virus. I wasn't really punished because I hadn't done any damage, but my parents got called. As usual, someone with limited computer skills that can't get a better job somewhere else, ends up teaching computers for slightly more than minimum wage. We used to have a lot of fun on the Novell network as well when the IT guy (think comic book guy from the Simpsons in real life) would walk away from his desk and leave it logged in. We would give ourselves admin and wreak havoc for a few hours until he noticed there was more than one superuser.
- thaumaturgy 16y ago
  > As usual, someone with limited computer skills that can't get a better job somewhere else, ends up teaching computers for slightly more than minimum wage. Statements like this make me rage a bit; students have to put up with non-technical teachers in part because precious few people in the high-tech sector can be moved to do teaching work in their community. It's as much our fault as anyone else's.
  - nowarninglabel 16y ago
    As a counterpoint, I had a teacher with limited computer skills who taught 'keyboarding' in middle school. Given that I was already at 80wpm, he decided to let me use the school's brand new computer lab next door during class hours, as long as I reported back with what use I put the computers too. So, not all non-technical teachers teaching computer classes are bad.
  - illumin8 16y ago
    Fair enough, but the comment is not meant to denigrate the teacher. I would much rather see a system that paid teachers appropriate salaries for their skill sets so that they could get qualified educators instead of the least common denominator. Why should qualified high-tech people work for substandard salaries? You can say out of the goodness of our hearts, but if the service they provide is valuable enough, and I think it is, they should be compensated appropriately.
    - thaumaturgy 16y ago
      Clifford Stoll has explained this far better than I could [1], but aside from the sheer intrinsic value and altruism of taking time out to be an amazing teacher for some students, it can also serve some really practical benefits: if you want the next generation of adults to have a firm grasp of science and technical issues -- whether they later operate a cash register, enter a career in politics, or build the next Amazon -- then it makes sense for us to find the time to teach these skills to students. If you want open source software to take over the world, teach programming to kids. If you want sensible social policies where science and technology are concerned, then teach science and technology to kids. If you want more rational discourse in the future, then teach logic to kids. Saying, "this is somebody else's job" -- even if you're also saying that it's a valuable job and they should be compensated well for it -- is not just self-serving, it's short-sighted. [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj8IA6xOpSk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj8IA6xOpSk
waynecolvin 16y ago
It's not the same as this story but I gamed Algebra II in in high school. It was last class of the day, the teacher was a track coach and most of us were in sports. Since time was short near the end of the year we all got permission to work at our own pace... As a C+ student in Algebra I quickly did the minimum on assignments in order to take more tests more often working far past in the book than we would have reached. I turned in crap of course but the total extra credit added up real good! ;) The teacher knew what I was pulling and even had to specify certain minimums, but went along with it nicely. (Other than never telling me just how high my grade finally was. Probably ~105%.)

Locke1689 16y ago

This never made sense to me. Back in freshman/sophomore year of high school I was pretty dumb and a little "grey hat" (just exploring, really). I would spend my spare time writing stack buffer overflows and of course had an Administrator account password to every computer in the network. Why would you do something so trivially traceable to you? I tended to do things more useful and under the radar like install CVS for my CS class.

ryanelkins 16y ago
Why would you do something so trivially traceable to you? Mostly because I didn't think it was a big deal. I mean, I changed the default homepage, I wasn't trying to format the drive or actually do anything that could be considered harmful. I didn't feel like I had to hide what I was doing. It's not like when I took "keyboarding" (it's like typing! but on computers!) and had to type some long paragraph 20 times. Typing it once and then copy-pasting 19 times was more "wrong" in my book.

megablast 16y ago

On the old BBC micros, I wrote a script that would loop through all possible passwords and try to log into the teachers password. Nothing was stored on computers in those days, so it wasn't such a big thing. I got busted, had to go to the Principle, and despite explaining that it would have taken approximately 2 years to loop through all possibilities, he still threatened suspension.

salvadors 16y ago
On the BBC's Econet system unless a machine was 'protected', any other machine on the network had access to its RAM - including the keyboard buffer. So it was fairly easy to get access to the teacher's password, especially if they always used the same machine and you could make sure in advance to unprotect it!