A in hacking?

[Tedob1]

A in hacking?

Heres a story with a differant twist

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High school student earns A in hacking
By Larry Slonaker
Mercury News


http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...ey/4754902.htm

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.

[The Old Man]

Now, that's a 'White-Hat' operator. With luck he'll be one of the leaders in this spiderweb, there has to be a way to make the place secure. 4.0 is no simple feat!

[ebo]

That is pretty creative, he showed his intelligntes not only with the books but computer wise. I like the fact that he helped his school know their weak points, and where they need some patches. I give this thread an A+ .

[Spyder32]

Wait a minute, his school administrators let him hack into their systems? They can't really be the school administrators or network administrators. I remember my network admin's of my school's lab (we were friends and often had contests) wouldn't let anyone do that. Also, by school admin, I take it he means Principal? Well, wouldn't the Principal say no, rather less take a further action? JMHO..

[spyrul]

i guess because he's (probably) a respectable student who has nothing much to gain through hacking the system, they figured he could be trusted.

and, it seems, indeed he could be.

[King of CaveMen]

One thing is for sure, he has now on an FBI hacker's watch list, even though he had the approval of his adminstrator.

[Tedob1]

i would think more he'd be on the fbi's "lets recruit him" list, as well as the "most wanted in a good way" list of every other nation's security devision.

[Valor]

Good article!

[free-fall]

nice threads i thinks he's good oh not good but very good.