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Schools are supposed to be the place where students can break things and break rules. It's part of the education.

by ww520 3y ago

notatoad 3y ago
learning that if you get caught you're going to be held accountable for your actions is also part of the education. it's not as if they executed OP. telling a kid to stop screwing around is pretty reasonable.
- fy20 3y ago
  During college in the mid 2000s I discovered that the network share with all corporate data was accessible (read only) to everyone. The only way it was not immediately obvious was because only sub folders were assigned a drive letter, and the network share was hidden in the UI. I found a way around that in the Windows open dialog and then was able to trigger Explorer to the top level directory. The share also contained private data of applicants (names, addresses, date of birth, education history) which was most concerning to us. With some friends we wrote a document showing what we found (not explaining how to do it) and posted it to an internal message board. We also sent copies via email to our IT teacher, sysadmin and the principle. Shortly after the sysadmin invited us for a chat and basically told us not to do that again. A couple of hours later we were invited to the principles office. The principle was away at the time, but the vice principle - who wanted to make a name for himself - immediately suspended us all and said he'd discuss it with the principle but said most likely we would be expelled, and they may need to involve the police. Our main concern in the post we made was that personal data was effectively publically accessible (to anyone who connects to ethernet - you didn't even need to log in). Even before GDPR, our country had very strong data protection laws which this would have breached. A few days later a parent sent a letter to the principle, effectively restating what we said, with added threats of reporting them for violating data protection of minors. Strangely after that the issue was dropped and we were allowed back...
  - Fnoord 3y ago
    Which goes to show us this computer thing is a learning experience for schools as well. We've come a long way since, and with things like ML we get the same experience.
  - CRConrad 3y ago
    Principal. Dunno if the principal had any principles.
- KyeRussell 3y ago
  Completely lost on me “babying kids and not showing them that actions can have consequences” is fetishised as soon as computers are involved. I guess because we all grew up doing this stuff. As an adult that writes software used by a lot of students in a classroom environment, I am glad to see that the spirit it still alive whenever I have a Sentry error come through indicating quite clearly that someone is trying to cheat by dicking around in dev tools. However I’m also certainly going to make the troublemakers shit their pants with a strongly worded console.log().
- LocalH 3y ago
  They got lucky. There have been many people who even tried to responsibly report a bug, and were treated as if they were misusing the resource. This is not just an education thing. Remember recently when there was a St. Louis reporter who found a glaring privacy violation in a Missouri state website (in that the website for whatever reason included people's SSN in the clear, but commented out. That reporter was initially treated as if they'd hacked the website and the governor of Missouri publicly spoke and said as much. Fortunately they weren't prosecuted, but even after prosecutors declined to do so, the governor still publicly called the reporter a "hacker".

Schools are supposed to be the place where students can break things and break rules. It's part of the education.

by ww520 3y ago

Schools are supposed to be the place where students can break things and break rules. It's part of the education.

learning that if you get caught you're going to be held accountable for your actions is also part of the education. it's not as if they executed OP. telling a kid to stop screwing around is pretty reasonable.

fy20 3y ago
During college in the mid 2000s I discovered that the network share with all corporate data was accessible (read only) to everyone. The only way it was not immediately obvious was because only sub folders were assigned a drive letter, and the network share was hidden in the UI. I found a way around that in the Windows open dialog and then was able to trigger Explorer to the top level directory. The share also contained private data of applicants (names, addresses, date of birth, education history) which was most concerning to us. With some friends we wrote a document showing what we found (not explaining how to do it) and posted it to an internal message board. We also sent copies via email to our IT teacher, sysadmin and the principle. Shortly after the sysadmin invited us for a chat and basically told us not to do that again. A couple of hours later we were invited to the principles office. The principle was away at the time, but the vice principle - who wanted to make a name for himself - immediately suspended us all and said he'd discuss it with the principle but said most likely we would be expelled, and they may need to involve the police. Our main concern in the post we made was that personal data was effectively publically accessible (to anyone who connects to ethernet - you didn't even need to log in). Even before GDPR, our country had very strong data protection laws which this would have breached. A few days later a parent sent a letter to the principle, effectively restating what we said, with added threats of reporting them for violating data protection of minors. Strangely after that the issue was dropped and we were allowed back...
- Fnoord 3y ago
  Which goes to show us this computer thing is a learning experience for schools as well. We've come a long way since, and with things like ML we get the same experience.
- CRConrad 3y ago
  Principal. Dunno if the principal had any principles.
KyeRussell 3y ago
Completely lost on me “babying kids and not showing them that actions can have consequences” is fetishised as soon as computers are involved. I guess because we all grew up doing this stuff. As an adult that writes software used by a lot of students in a classroom environment, I am glad to see that the spirit it still alive whenever I have a Sentry error come through indicating quite clearly that someone is trying to cheat by dicking around in dev tools. However I’m also certainly going to make the troublemakers shit their pants with a strongly worded console.log().
LocalH 3y ago
They got lucky. There have been many people who even tried to responsibly report a bug, and were treated as if they were misusing the resource. This is not just an education thing. Remember recently when there was a St. Louis reporter who found a glaring privacy violation in a Missouri state website (in that the website for whatever reason included people's SSN in the clear, but commented out. That reporter was initially treated as if they'd hacked the website and the governor of Missouri publicly spoke and said as much. Fortunately they weren't prosecuted, but even after prosecutors declined to do so, the governor still publicly called the reporter a "hacker".