HS Students Steal SSNs to Prove They Can

thatshortkid writes "Local news in Chicago is reporting about two Hinsdale Central High School students who breached their school's computer system and retrieved all of their peers' (plus staff's) Social Security Numbers. They claim they have destroyed the information and haven't given it out, but the SSA and FTC have been alerted for good measure. While they claim their motive was to prove that the breach could take place and no malice was involved, they face possible school disciplinary action and criminal charges."

Well

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it a Microsoft 2003 server edition computer ?

G I T M O

[Anonymous Coward]

Right or wrong they might provide expertise to terrorists, or might engage in weapons of mass destruction related activity programs.

Re:Good, throw them in jail!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and I'm sure they destroyed all files and documents they stole. Just like they said. Months ago, even. In fact, I don't know of any reason that high school students (you do know that there is reason to think there were more than just these two, don't you?) would want to break into school computer systems except for testing the school security.

These are honest, upstanding role models. Nay, heros. Modern day American heros. They selflessly took on "the man" in the name of the little person and all that is good and true. Sure, the act was months ago, but I'm sure they were spending all that time writing up a detailed report to give to the school.

But hey, these are just kids, right? I'm sure they can't even tell the difference between right and wrong. And let's face it, they are the real victims here. The Pollyanna looks on their sweet cherub faces are forever lost.

"Golly Beav, whatcha doing? I'm going down to the homeless shelter to volunteer to bathe the invalids. Wanna come?"

"Do I? You bet. But first we better do a security audit of the old high school. A safe computer is a happy computer."

"Ok, but I'm warning you, if we see anything that we shouldn't then I'm going to close my eyes!"

Re:ridiculous

[shaitand]

Ok, this dude is browsing the web on a system with valuable data. Attention all hackers!!!!

Re:Ask yourself: why is a high school using SSNs?

[g-san]

Huh? Schools definitely need SSNs. How else do you think they put things on YOUR PERMANENT RECORD?!?!

Re:That's pretty high security...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure Western State College of Colorado appreciates that post so much.

What are kids coming to these days?

[raehl]

How many times have people broken into school databases only to be arrested!

Back when I was in school, we only broke into the school database to change our grades.

Re:When I was in HS...

[Motherfucking Shit]

I broke into my school's netware directory just because the sysadmin was such a S*B.

"S*B?"

Must have been a Catholic school... Nobody else masks acronyms.

Re:Dumbasses.....

[greyhoundpoe]

That's not all! I've been able to get the home addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses of a large number of my friends as well!

What, no Soviet Russia jokes yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, students have teachers' social security numbers!

Re:More about saving face (was:Dumbasses.....)

[blue_adept]

you happen to be two standard deviations or further away (in the higher direction as IQ is measured) then you are considered gifted, to my knowledge. A demonstration of what I could do was nessisary...

If your IQ is 2 standard deviations from the norm, shouldn't you know how to spell "necessary". Then again, you didn't specify in what direction.

Re:ridiculous

[Mattintosh]

Really I have no sympathy for intelligent people who fail to utilize a little bit of judgement.

Amen.

I found vulnerabilities in the school network when I was in high school, too. I found an unprotected (no password!) super user named "Ron". I fiddled with it for a while, then I deleted everyone's user accounts. On a Friday. Monday morning, the accounts were back, "Ron" was replaced by "Rob", and the teachers had dark circles under their eyes.

I repeated it with "Rob", "Roy", "Russ", and several other similar names. Mind you, all other accounts were like "jsmith" or "ajones", all first initial, last name stuff. These super user accounts were NAMED like a sore thumb. They could've named one "MOTHERFUCK" and it wouldn't have been any more obvious that it was a super user.

They finally wised up and just assigned a group of teachers to be admins without the safety net of a backdoor account. They ditched Novell soon after, I hear, but that was after I graduated.

And for those that want to know, I fessed up after I had my grades and transcript in hand. They said something to the effect of "well, at least we know that we can't trust anyone not to find a back door". Therein lies the lesson: don't tell them it's you until they have no means of harming you.