Borg77 Posted December 18, 2002 Share Posted December 18, 2002 High school student earns A in hacking By Larry Slonaker Mercury News Reid Ellison, an 11th-grader at Anzar High School in San Juan Bautista, recently decided a cool student project would be to hack into the school's computer grading system. So he presented the idea to school administrators, and they gave him the go-ahead. He hacked his way in without difficulty. Once there, he wanted to leave a footprint to prove he had been successful. But he couldn't artificially bump up his grades -- he already had a straight-A average. His solution? Lower his grades. He dropped himself from a 4.0 grade-point average to 1.9. ``It was kind of the opposite of what most people would do,'' he said Monday. Reid's project was an Anzar ``exhibition.'' The school requires students to create six exhibitions to graduate. The projects, which have both a written and oral component, ``are supposed to be issue-based, not topic-based,'' said Wayne Norton, Reid's adviser. ``They're not just reports.'' Students' exhibitions have to touch on six subject areas, and Reid hit three in his hacking report -- history, science and math. (Part 2 of his written report was, ``The History of Hacking.'') Last week he gave a presentation on his project to his three evaluators. They gave him a perfect score. As it turned out, doing the report was the hard part of the project. The hacking was easy. ``I had a pretty good idea that it wasn't the best security system,'' Reid said. Once he had his hacking program in place, figuring out the password ``didn't take too long -- 200 milliseconds.'' He didn't tell any fellow students he had been successful until the administration had a chance to change the password. The school is taking other steps to shore up its security, too. ``We're aware we've got a hole that needs to be plugged,'' Norton said. After his hacking venture was recorded, Reid remembered perhaps the most important stage of the project. He made sure his grades were adjusted back up. He obviously didn't get that 4.0 by accident. Source: Mecury News Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danbalsh Posted December 18, 2002 Share Posted December 18, 2002 Whaaaaatttt....!!!!!! why don't we just start to teach kids how to hack! :wacko: This is just silly :( only in american :happy: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
parimal_kumar Posted December 18, 2002 Share Posted December 18, 2002 Glad to see a school trying to promote some real technical talent as opposed the standard "Data Protection Act" that they teach here in the UK! :rolleyes: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aco Veteran Posted December 18, 2002 Veteran Share Posted December 18, 2002 Is it just me or does anyone see the irony in the name of his advisor. :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danbalsh Posted December 18, 2002 Share Posted December 18, 2002 Is it just me or does anyone see the irony in the name of his advisor. :D LOL - yeah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomwarren Veteran Posted December 18, 2002 Veteran Share Posted December 18, 2002 Tbh it probably wasn't that hard, its not really technical talent - hacking. Schools systems are always full of holes and poor passwords/firewall/anti virus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uniacid Posted December 18, 2002 Share Posted December 18, 2002 Tbh it probably wasn't that hard, its not really technical talent - hacking. Schools systems are always full of holes and poor passwords/firewall/anti virus. yea its rediculous, I can see the whole network at my school, and if I wanted to get into some machines sure like this kid did I could just get a password breaker and get in to someone's protected system :D, But if I were to hack I'd spread a virus and format every computer in the school, why? b/c I shaging hate my school! and they can all goto hell! :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deimos Posted December 18, 2002 Share Posted December 18, 2002 yay! finally, hackers are getting some respect instead of getting punished! :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nomis_nehc Posted December 18, 2002 Share Posted December 18, 2002 No matter what though, still gotta give the kid some props. If you think about it, it's those Network Administrator at that school that should be getting a good spanking or fired. I do believe that everything can be hacked one way or another, just matter of time. And some matter are really not worth the time. :happy: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mxp Posted December 18, 2002 Share Posted December 18, 2002 we had an open hacking chalange at my school too about 3 yrs ago Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
altezza Veteran Posted December 18, 2002 Veteran Share Posted December 18, 2002 I'm not surprised to hear this but found it interesting to read :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unique Posted December 18, 2002 Share Posted December 18, 2002 I got into my school by calling one of the teachers posing as an IT technicial, and telling her that we were checking if passwords would work on the new system switchover, and she actually gave it to me, didn't bump/lower my grades, just changed the clocks by 25 mins......hehehehe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evil Dragon Posted December 18, 2002 Share Posted December 18, 2002 I got into my school by calling one of the teachers posing as an IT technicial, and telling her that we were checking if passwords would work on the new system switchover, and she actually gave it to me, didn't bump/lower my grades, just changed the clocks by 25 mins......hehehehe. I should really try that! :D ;) :shifty: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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