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We used to have so much fun with this in school. Wrote scripts to disable the surveillance software, proxy our traffic over SSH, exploit permissions gaps to hel

We used to have so much fun with this in school. Wrote scripts to disable the surveillance software, proxy our traffic over SSH, exploit permissions gaps to help students run games on school laptops, etc.. Even discovered that the "teacher" version of the software could be used for complete surveillance and control of every student computer on the network. Despite doing nothing malicious, I was reprimanded heavily for describing to the principal the severity of the issue after other kids were caught doing less than savory things with it. I learned something then. And it seems the "real world" isn't much different.

ravenstine 7y ago
One of my schools was naive in believing that Windows Firewall would suffice to prevent kids from playing multiplayer games so long as student accounts had restricted rights preventing them from toggling the firewall. What they didn't know was that a simple Batch script I wrote could easily switch off the firewall, so I distributed it to all my friends so the games continued. We played Halo, Counter Strike, Doom, and Unreal Tournament all year. I have another story related to yours. Myself and 3 friends were taking a programming class in high school, and one of them discovered that the screen casting software that teachers used(which also functioned as surveillance software) could be "reversed" without admin access. Not only did he figure out how to spy on everyone's screens, but during class he managed to cast his screen to everyone in the school, including teachers who were using their projectors to do lectures. It was pretty funny, and I don't remember how he did it. This was in New Zealand, so while the school officials were extremely pissed, he didn't get expelled since what he did was fairly harmless and it exposed a serious flaw in the system. I imagine if this was happened in the United States, he'd have at least been expelled and possibly charged with a crime.
- abstractbarista 7y ago
  Ahh fun times! My principal specifically said that it was a good thing I was a minor. Oof.

ravenstine 7y ago

One of my schools was naive in believing that Windows Firewall would suffice to prevent kids from playing multiplayer games so long as student accounts had restricted rights preventing them from toggling the firewall. What they didn't know was that a simple Batch script I wrote could easily switch off the firewall, so I distributed it to all my friends so the games continued. We played Halo, Counter Strike, Doom, and Unreal Tournament all year. I have another story related to yours. Myself and 3 friends were taking a programming class in high school, and one of them discovered that the screen casting software that teachers used(which also functioned as surveillance software) could be "reversed" without admin access. Not only did he figure out how to spy on everyone's screens, but during class he managed to cast his screen to everyone in the school, including teachers who were using their projectors to do lectures. It was pretty funny, and I don't remember how he did it. This was in New Zealand, so while the school officials were extremely pissed, he didn't get expelled since what he did was fairly harmless and it exposed a serious flaw in the system. I imagine if this was happened in the United States, he'd have at least been expelled and possibly charged with a crime.

abstractbarista 7y ago
Ahh fun times! My principal specifically said that it was a good thing I was a minor. Oof.