Thursday, January 28, 2010
High School Hackers
When I was in my sophomore year in high school, a group of guys on the football team were angry because they weren't allowed to go on their senior trip due to their behavior problems in their classes. As retribution against this "injustice", they decided to hack the school's computer system and crash the server using a virus their buddy designed. This wreaked havoc in the school office because all data was lost - including grades and academic records. Luckily the majority of this was backed up in a district server or something like that, so most data was recoverable. All data for the most recent month had not been saved, so it had to be re-entered into the computer system after they got the computers working again. The administration complained about that one for years, but at least they had most of the data safely stored in another location.
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Did they catch all of the guys? Do you know what their punishment was? Just curious :)
ReplyDeleteWhat an unbelievable stunt! In my high school we got punished for everything, including any type of senior prank, so I can't imagine attempting/succeeding at anything as serious as an attack on the school system. Our punishment would no doubt have been legal consequences with the police and therefore I did not pull any pranks in high school.
ReplyDeleteThis is both amusing and horrific. Those kids are absurdly smart. We can't always control their actions - but just CYA and make sure that they don't do these things through your computer or login information. And be sure to back up all your grades as well! I used to keep my grades in a paper gradebook at first and then transfer them into the electronic one. Then I switched to just using the electronic one but printing copies and/or saving them on disc as a back up.
ReplyDeleteA truly fascinating story - unlike any I've heard before ! Guess it just teaches us to always back up data. Computers can be rather unforgiving at times.. data once lost can never be retrieved. Hard copies are always a safe bet.
ReplyDeleteActually, there was no hard evidence of what they did, so they never got in any official trouble even though everyone knew who did it.
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