4 ms·

In my years in the school we had many "inspirations". We wrote Turbo Pascal based phishing CLIs, decrypted PWL files, exploited wrongly set access rights etc.

In my years in the school we had many "inspirations". We wrote Turbo Pascal based phishing CLIs, decrypted PWL files, exploited wrongly set access rights etc. I don't see a point where making this kind of stuff secure in another more targeted way (e.g. central exam server) is helping in any way. You can still held hacker competitions in computer science classes anyway (hopefully mandatory for all).

Shared404 5y ago
Based on my somewhat recent high school experience, mandatory computer science classes will not happen at a high school level on a consistent basis between schools, at least not without massive systemic change. What "computer" class is these days is "MS Office" class. Except actually it's "MS Word and Excel class, except the teacher only ever calls it "the typing thing". And even if there were sanctioned hacker competitions, they would become classwork and therefore boring. The fact that it is against the rules is part of the draw. For what it's worth, I think there's something to be said for leaving a situation like this inherently insecure. Yes it's manipulative, but somebody learning something from their own drive is a lot better than standardized testing beating it into the infodump section of the brain. Your "inspirations" sound quite enjoyable! You were definitely much more skilled than me or anyone I knew.
- chromanoid 5y ago
  I don't think holding wargames in class would make them boring because of that. I would've enjoyed such a thing. For normal classes some kind of "hacking adventure" where using view source and other tricks to move forward is necessary I also don't see any boring faces. The teacher who sells this stuff to the children is key here. This is why teachers should have as much time for preparation as possible. At best this preparation would be like preparation of an actor (with extensive knowledge of the plot), because everything else is already at hand (just my idea of what teachers should be).
  - Shared404 5y ago
    That would be enjoyable. If we had a functional school system I think this could actually work. I just see the intentionally insecure quiz working in the current setting, and there being no way to implement the wargames in an effective way in this setting.

Shared404 5y ago

Based on my somewhat recent high school experience, mandatory computer science classes will not happen at a high school level on a consistent basis between schools, at least not without massive systemic change. What "computer" class is these days is "MS Office" class. Except actually it's "MS Word and Excel class, except the teacher only ever calls it "the typing thing". And even if there were sanctioned hacker competitions, they would become classwork and therefore boring. The fact that it is against the rules is part of the draw. For what it's worth, I think there's something to be said for leaving a situation like this inherently insecure. Yes it's manipulative, but somebody learning something from their own drive is a lot better than standardized testing beating it into the infodump section of the brain. Your "inspirations" sound quite enjoyable! You were definitely much more skilled than me or anyone I knew.

chromanoid 5y ago
I don't think holding wargames in class would make them boring because of that. I would've enjoyed such a thing. For normal classes some kind of "hacking adventure" where using view source and other tricks to move forward is necessary I also don't see any boring faces. The teacher who sells this stuff to the children is key here. This is why teachers should have as much time for preparation as possible. At best this preparation would be like preparation of an actor (with extensive knowledge of the plot), because everything else is already at hand (just my idea of what teachers should be).
- Shared404 5y ago
  That would be enjoyable. If we had a functional school system I think this could actually work. I just see the intentionally insecure quiz working in the current setting, and there being no way to implement the wargames in an effective way in this setting.