Student Hackers Changed Grades, Expelled
from the kids-will-be-kids dept
Luke writes in with a link to the story of some student hackers who have been expelled from high school for hacking into different teachers' computers and changing both their grades and their attendance records. Honestly, I'm sure this happens all the time - it's just that these kids got caught. It used to be that kids would try to change the grades in the written grade book. Now they have computers. Same crime, different medium. It's amusing how the article describes the keylogger program they used to get the teachers' passwords as "sophisticated", when it sounds like a pretty standard keylogger.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Happens 'all the time'? Not.
That is how the school district got confused over me. Ya see, the rumor was I changed my grades. Yet, they coudld find no evidence.
When asked (by the vice princaple - a 'distant' cousin as I later found out) I told them the system passwords, the maintance times, the access numbers, etc la. Then I pointed out the 'security' - grades could only be entered once, and only in a 2 week window. All other entries had to be made 'downtown' at the local console(s). And there was the paper records.
The 'paper records' are the security. If you want your grades to change, it is FAR eaiser to pay off the teachers. Or, gosh, exhibit an effort in class. It doesn't take much to be better than 80% of the others.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]