I continue to look for details on the case of a 14-year old middle school student who is facing two felony counts for allegedly hacking into his district’s network (see previous coverage of the case on this blog here and here).
In today’s installment of How Badly Can a District Screw Up InfoSecurity? Ashley Feinberg of Gawker reports:
Another devious, young techno-wiz was placed safely behind bars this past Wednesday after authorities say he deftly “hacked into his school’s secure computer network” by guessing the password (his teacher’s last name). The crime? Changing the desktop background to two dudes kissin’. The punishment? Arrest on felony charges.
The hacker wunderkind of Holiday, Florida’s Paul R. Smith Middle School, Domanik Green, explained that he uncovered the secret password by “watching the teacher type it in.” At which point, and like a young Julian Assange, he “logged into a teacher’s computer who [he] didn’t like and tried putting inappropriate pictures on his computer to annoy him.”
So he shoulder-surfed the password. Wait until you find out how long ago that happened. In an interview with yet another news station:
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.
So the district knew last year they had a problem. And what did they do to prevent recurrences? And what did they do to educate the students to understand the seriousness of their conduct?
And why did they issue one password to teachers two years ago, as ABC reports:
During a news conference, Sheriff Chris Nocco said approximately two years ago one password had been given to teachers, which somehow made it into the hands of a student, which was then passed on.Nocco said the student had the password and was able to make remote access to the computer and was looking for porn.