Skiddie Caught?

Well, the "good ole boys" have caught them a skiddie :rolleyes:

http://www.dnj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art...WS06/809040315

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The 16-year-old boy hacked into the school's computer network and got a "low-level Windows password ... that gave him access to the network," Evans said.

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"Hacked" means that he found the I/O switch?

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Nonetheless, school system technicians must reset all Windows passwords on Siegel's 600 computers. Evans said that will take about 10 minutes for each computer, creating about 100 hours of work for the technicians.

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Why does it take them 10 minutes to do that which takes me 10 seconds?.............. ah! the opposable thumbs?

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The student had a hearing in the county's Juvenile Court on Friday.

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And the staff will attend my drumhead court martial at Guantanamo when I tell them :xbones:

I would suggest that they practice self-abuse............. only they have lost the instruction manual?

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Originally Posted by nihil

Why does it take them 10 minutes to do that which takes me 10 seconds?.............. ah! the opposable thumbs?

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.. no the ten mins is a figure to get good compensation.. in other words insurance fraud.. did I say that?
HE hacked with local access!!!!!.. and was using Netsend to boast his actions.!!!....
that is a detention.. but the school needs to shoot the admin and refine their policy for passwords..
My goodness.. how paranoid are the school admins.. criminal charges?? FFS

Now had he done this from an external account.. then it would be reasonable to consider criminal approach.. internal..
The kid prob got the password from a dumbass teacher, who types at 10 words per hour, by simply looking over his shoulder.
yes.. thats a r...and that is a 3..... yep a d ...and a shift d and a 1 ..wait for it ... aaaaaaa c what's this ... a shift k... and enter... he is did.. ... yep logon successful .. just love these slooooow typists.

pencil?

O

You all obviously don't appreciate the seriousness of this. A fiend like this will next move on to.... well something. And it won't be good. Heck in another couple years he might be ... well something else and it won't be good either.

Didn't we all do something stupid when we were that age?

And I agree.. 10 min. per machine is BS. I'll do all 600 in about 5 min. I've been a Windows admin for many years but WTF is a "low-level" windows account? Is that just a normal user account? Then why do they need to change the passwords on 600 machines?

If anything.. they need to fire their technicians because they clearly have no clue..

Well SD,

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Didn't we all do something stupid when we were that age?

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Yes, but to be perfectly honest, in my case computers hadn't been invented :D

In my opinion it was just a schoolboy prank or practical joke. No harm done (except to a few egos, perhaps?) and it would seem that none was intended. Hell, he got caught by a teacher not an admin?............... they seem to be treating the case as if it were a hoax emergency services call.

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WTF is a "low-level" windows account?

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Exactly! I think that they mean a "high level account", as in one with administrator or near privileges.

Which leads me to your next observation, and perhaps makes some sense:

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Then why do they need to change the passwords on 600 machines?

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Because they don't use remote support/administration, so each machine has at least a local admin account on it, and the User IDs and passwords are all the same. :dunce:

I would urge a word of caution here. I have worked for a number of organisations where IT (and most others) were strictly forbidden to talk to the media. That was the remit of PR/HR................ and we all know how much they know about IT?

At this stage it looks like the administrative network is secure(ish) in that it is probably administered centrally by the State schools' management. As for the local network............:ubergun:

Because of the PR drone I'm most certain "low-level" means something else ;)

My guess too would be some local admin account which has the same password on all boxes. As I've seen that before too..

And low-level meaning local to the machine as opposed to maybe a network domain account?
Even if this is "just the local network" and one of those local machine accounts had been breached.. Pfff..
Man.. Still doesn't take friggin 10 minutes per machine.
They're networked for pete's sake!

The guy is being railroaded for the incompetence of the IT department. I still vote on firing them :D

They're probably way too busy grepping through the next prom queen's mailbox looking for dirty pictures :eek7:

You gotta estimate the big damages. A guy makes a few free phone calls and he has compromised the phone system to the tune of millions of dollars even though they would have only cost a couple bucks. A guy downloads some apps or music and it some how kept hundreds of thousands from suddenly purchasing the product. I think they ought to prosecute the companies for fraud for trying collect that kind of damages.

Yes, I have seen quite a few of these "guesstimates" that really belong in the pages of a Purlitzer prizewinning novel.

It seems to be the usual problem..............top down. From the little research I have done this is a state funded school so will be managed by a county education authority with some oversight by the state.

If it is anything like over here, the education authority will be based some distance away. Mine is about 24 miles, for example. My local schools cannot afford more than one or two people to look after everything on site. They advertised such a job at the local sports college............... €25,000 (£18,000) or so.......... not what will buy you the sharpest tools in the box?

The best jobs are in county hall and they don't even think about what is happening outside their little political silo. So the problem is a lack of a coherent management structure:

1. Security model
2. Security processes
3. Security procedures
4. Security processes

And a management and auditing process to enforce them.

OK, let's look at the environment? It is a school with probably 1.500 pupils and 30 to a class (their figures), which makes 50 classrooms. They claim 1 computer per 5 students in ordinary classes. That makes 6 per room.

Language, science and IT laboratories have a 1:1 ratio which would be 30 per room. I guess there will be some in the library as well.

There is no way that takes 10 minutes per machine, even if you did it manually (which seems to be the implication).

Start introducing scripts, external media and network access and it becomes a whole different calculation.

Sure, there are those who will say that the kid brought it upon himself or that he was a victim of his own stupidity; but what if someone really malicious had a go at that site?

:shocked:

And what about all the other schools that come under the same jurisdiction?

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The guy is being railroaded for the incompetence of the IT department. I still vote on firing them

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What IT department? It's a middle school.

I not only hope you lose your job... but I hope everything and everyone dear to you vanishes.

And while you lay groveling in self-pity I'll be there to look down on you and to yell, "You sir, are an incompetent loser!"

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What IT department? It's a middle school.

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Congratulations............. you catch on fast:

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The best jobs are in county hall and they don't even think about what is happening outside their little political silo. So the problem is a lack of a coherent management structure:

1. Security model
2. Security processes
3. Security procedures
4. Security processes

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And:

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It seems to be the usual problem..............top down. From the little research I have done this is a state funded school so will be managed by a county education authority with some oversight by the state.

If it is anything like over here, the education authority will be based some distance away. Mine is about 24 miles, for example. My local schools cannot afford more than one or two people to look after everything on site

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:)

No Harm No Foul.

As mentioned by various people, the kid is school age and there was no malicious intent (If there was, the kid would have made sure of a 0% chance of being caught at the time).

It would have been a boast thing among his mates or likewise. However, that aside - I posted because as i was reading it occured to me a thread like this would do well in the hands of the media......

An independant board of "IT Experts" making comments and observations about the collussal stuff up in the EDU dept. The 100hrs+ work load is just complete BS for the IT staff to cover themselves - Noone in their right mind would proclaim a quick-solution that anyone could do when their jobs are hanging by a thread.

Any takes on directing media to this thread? *Steps back from firing line*


CTO

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the kid is school age and there was no malicious intent (If there was, the kid would have made sure of a 0% chance of being caught at the time).

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If there was no malicious intent people wouldn't even point out any wrongdoing.

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(If there was, the kid would have made sure of a 0% chance of being caught at the time).

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You're trying to imply that more planning would be involved. I doubt that.

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If there was no malicious intent people wouldn't even point out any wrongdoing.

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I am sorry to have to disillusion you there. Gross over-reaction is actually very common amongst incompetents to create a smokescreen to cover their incompetence. You will have to take that one on trust, but I do have considerable experience of working with local and national government employees. ;)

I do not believe that yours are much different from ours?

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You're trying to imply that more planning would be involved. I doubt that.

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It would if the intentions were malicious rather than mischivious.

There is absolutely no evidence of this, and I feel that the local police's lack of comment is rather "interesting?"

For the life of me I cannot see this as more than a schoolkid messing around? The online info about the school tells you the setup?

1 computer per five kids or one each in the technical rooms. Teacher has a master computer where all student activity can be watched? Hell's teeth if you were in any way malicious don't you think you would have worked that out?

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Originally Posted by nihil

Well SD,


Yes, but to be perfectly honest, in my case computers hadn't been invented

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How old are you exactly? The first computer was designed over a hundred years ago. And of course Zuse made actual progress in Germany back in the 30s and 40s.... You'd have to be at least a hundred years old to say something like that ;)

It depends how you define "computer". Given the context, I was referring to PCs in schools or the home.

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In 1971, the microprocessor went on sale. Developed by Ted Hoff of Intel, the Intel 4004 was to revolutionise home computing. The 4004 cost just over £3000 in today’s money but by 1972, Intel had produced the 8008 which was far more powerful that the 4004 but cost a tenth of the price of the 4004. Microprocessors had a multitude of uses but they could be used at the heart of true personal computers.

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When I was 16 this was what I had to use in school:

http://home.comcast.net/~wtodhner/calcs.html

The mushroom coloured one at the bottom of the page ;)

The "arithmetometer"....................... much faster than log tables :cool:

I know, I just had to push some buttons to see which one was your on switch lol ;)

Kids have always done stupid ****. When I was a kid we played outside, rode our bikes (Schwinn, banana seat, lime green, with the slick on the back, sweet ride :-) ), carried our bb guns, swam in the creek, roamed in the woods, ice skated and went sledding in the winter. Now kids sit on their computers or game consoles all day.

We occasionally shot lights or windows with our bb guns, blew up frogs or crawdads with firecrackers. If we got caught damaging the neighbor's property we got our asses whipped, had to pay for it, but it was written off as boys will be boys. Now the kids do dumb **** with their computers since that is what they spend their time doing. When they get caught you would think the world was in danger of ending.

Nihil,

I can relate. My high school had an IBM 1130 computer. We programmed in Fortran and Basic. Punched cards and paper tape. Everything had to fit in 8k.

We weren't allowed to use calculators in school, had to memorize the multiplication tables. In physics we were allowed to use slide rules.

COBOL is coming back!!!!

Cobol - Isnt that the name of the planet where the gods went in Battle Star Galactica?> The Remake is awesome btw.....

I wonder how much of a coincidence it is between the language and the named planet.

The language came first

This is funny... the low level account is just the login to get into the schools "security program" in this case and with a lot of other schools it is novell, all you have to do is press ctrl + shift + esc and it will bring up the login window where you just have to get the user/pass... then you have privileges to mess with the computers start up disable/enable security features such as the start menu or taskbar, the messages he sent to other computers is a novel feature "novell messenger" I used it a lot to chat with friends while at school... ah the good ol' days! The kid was just having some fun, the most that should happen is he should be banned from the network for a while, maybe suspended for a couple days.

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http://www.novell.com/products/openenterpriseserver/index.html

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