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posted by takyon on Monday April 13 2015, @08:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the hackers-on-gatorade dept.

Russia Today America reports:

A 14-year-old middle school student is facing felony computer hacking charges after he admitted to accessing a teacher's computer during class without permission. If that wasn't bad enough, he then displayed an image of two men kissing.

Domanik Green, an eighth grader at Paul R. Smith Middle School in Holiday, Florida, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with an offense against a computer system and unauthorized access: a third-degree felony under Florida state law.

[...] The school had distributed a single password for all teachers to use, approximately two years ago. One educator had shared it with a student, who soon let his classmates in on the secret.

The Tampa Bay Times notes:

Green, interviewed at home, said students would often log into the administrative account to screen-share with their friends. They'd use the school computers' cameras to see each other, he said.

Green had previously received a three-day suspension for accessing the system inappropriately. Other students also got in trouble at the time, he said. It was a well-known trick, Green said, because the password was easy to remember: a teacher's last name. He said he discovered it by watching the teacher type it in.

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by wantkitteh on Monday April 13 2015, @08:55AM

    by wantkitteh (3362) on Monday April 13 2015, @08:55AM (#169592) Homepage Journal

    A 13-14 year old pulls a prank on a teacher, exposing how pathetic the entire school's security is - systematically broken wide open by shoulder-surfing a single teacher, puh-leaze! - but because some moron somewhere called that password scheme "security" (and let's be honest, no IT professional even semi-competent would say that) it's a felony instead of a wake-up call to the school that pretty much every single pupil has access to their teacher's crap.

    Some prosecutor somewhere expects a 14-year-old to have the maturity to call a meeting of the school board, ask permission to demonstrate the flaw in security with legal ramifications, tell them how widespread the problem is and let them burn their IT people at the stake. Yeah, right! I guess that kid already commits his 3 inadvertent felonies a day...

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by AnonTechie on Monday April 13 2015, @09:28AM

    by AnonTechie (2275) on Monday April 13 2015, @09:28AM (#169609) Journal

    Yeah, don't kill the messenger. The school should be held accountable for having shitty security.

    --
    Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday April 13 2015, @10:30AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 13 2015, @10:30AM (#169631) Journal

    A 13-14 year old pulls a prank on a teacher, exposing how pathetic the entire school's security is

    They school's security is iron-y: based on the iron fist of the prosecutor, that is.
    That teen should have known better, we'll use him as an example to make sure everyone understands.
    OBEY! That's the only education you'll need.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by zugedneb on Monday April 13 2015, @08:47PM

    by zugedneb (4556) on Monday April 13 2015, @08:47PM (#169978)

    dat rage...

    anytime now, you will go fight the injustice...

    heard IKEA have foldable barricades you can set up at small crossing of choice

    --
    old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
  • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday April 13 2015, @10:36PM

    by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday April 13 2015, @10:36PM (#170042) Journal

    It just shows how damned retarded our school systems and laws has become as when I was in the seventh grade I "hacked" the schools handful of desktops to tell the kids they were a dumbass when they got the question wrong, the punishment? Being told to get my butt over there and fix it as their so called "computer expert" didn't even know enough BASIC to undo what I had done!

    --
    ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
    • (Score: 2) by jasassin on Tuesday April 14 2015, @04:53AM

      by jasassin (3566) <jasassin@gmail.com> on Tuesday April 14 2015, @04:53AM (#170218) Homepage Journal

      When I was in highschool, the passwords were birthdays. I guess I was the only one that noticed the significance of the happy birthday messages scrolling along the LED billboard's saying what time it was, misc shit, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

      --
      jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
  • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday April 14 2015, @01:55AM

    by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Tuesday April 14 2015, @01:55AM (#170150)

    no IT professional even semi-competent would say that

    I would be willing to bet that this was the best the IT professional could manage without having the teachers taping the passwords to the computer. Schools are hard places to implement corporate level security, typically the IT people hold the least secure jobs and bucking the will of the users is a tough go.

    • (Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Tuesday April 14 2015, @10:18AM

      by wantkitteh (3362) on Tuesday April 14 2015, @10:18AM (#170309) Homepage Journal

      I was (briefly) IT manager for a school - getting teachers to remember passwords is okay, as long as you can also get them to remember their usernames. And yeah, job security is just zero in those places.

    • (Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday April 14 2015, @04:30PM

      by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 14 2015, @04:30PM (#170446)

      So because there are teachers that can't remember their FB password the security scheme is lowered to one password fits all? That's practically criminal. People keep losing keys to the doors so we'll just not put locks on.

      --
      SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.