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Ask HN: My 13 year-old cousin hacked into his school's system. What advice would you give?

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Re: Ask HN: My 13 year-old cousin hacked into his school's system. What advice would you give?

#51

Post by jacquesm »

unalone wrote: post #48
jacquesm wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The solution is to develop teachers who are more singularly fascinating than the Internet, which is a difficult challenge. That had me chuckling out loud. I think we'll see a certain game program for sale before that will happen.

It's possible. My English teacher in junior year absolutely was. I went in the first day, tried to pick a snarky fight with him over James Joyce, and then stayed after class to talk to him about Ulysses and Nabakov's Lolita. ( Ulysses is one of my favorite novels.) By the end of the week, he'd recommended two bands to me that I fell in love with; before winter, he lent me his copy of 69 Love Songs , which profoundly…

Amazing story...

Identifying people like that really would be a mission worth undertaking, food for thought there.

The game reference is a /. meme reference about 'duke nukem forever', a game that has been in production since '97. The running gag is which will come first: hell freezes over, duke nukem forever is released or the Hurd is finished.

My money is on hell to freeze over :)

Re: Ask HN: My 13 year-old cousin hacked into his school's system. What advice would you give?

#52

Post by unalone »

jacquesm wrote: post #51
unalone wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible. My English teacher in junior year absolutely was. I went in the first day, tried to pick a snarky fight with him over James Joyce, and then stayed after class to talk to him about Ulysses and Nabakov's Lolita. ( Ulysses is one of my favorite novels.) By the end of the week, he'd recommended two bands to me that I fell in love with; before winter, he lent me his copy of 69 Love Songs , which profoundly…

Amazing story... Identifying people like that really would be a mission worth undertaking, food for thought there. The game reference is a /. meme reference about 'duke nukem forever', a game that has been in production since '97. The running gag is which will come first: hell freezes over, duke nukem forever is released or the Hurd is finished. My money is on hell to freeze over :)

Rumor has it that the game'll be out by 2010. I saw the intro video myself. (And wasn't Chinese Democracy finally released?)

Re: Ask HN: My 13 year-old cousin hacked into his school's system. What advice would you give?

#53

Post by tptacek »

jollyjerry wrote: post #44

If your cousin is interested in doing that kind of work, why not suggest him to volunteer with the school? All the other responses seem to romanticize the rogue hacker. Instead, I think he should come clean, and do his work in the public. He could offer to audit the school's network. For a 13 year old, this would be a great opportunity to teach him to be professional and helpful.

This is a fantastic way to get your cousin expelled from school, and to provide him with a shiny new juvenile criminal record.

Re: Ask HN: My 13 year-old cousin hacked into his school's system. What advice would you give?

#54

Post by tptacek »

utnick wrote: post #34
vaksel wrote: post #3

define "hacking", did he do anything complicated, or did he just guess a password?

indeed, this could mean anything, i got sent to the principal one time for having a windows dos command prompt open, no joke Apparently it was actually a rule in the rulebook that you arent allowed to use the command line because you can do 'great damage'. On most computers it was disabled, but this was computer science class and we wrote console applications in c++ (through visual studio ide) so it had to be enabled…

In fairness to your otherwise overly twitchy school administration, it is in fact possible for dumb people with just enough DOS knowledge to screw up a standard PC build from the command line, enough to require a rebuild.

Re: Ask HN: My 13 year-old cousin hacked into his school's system. What advice would you give?

#56

Post by andreyf »

Do what my parents did when I got suspended for "hacking":

1) Get him a new computer (but with a crappy video card, if he's into gaming)

2) Find him programming internships and introduce him to programmers you know

I would also add:

Tell him that he isn't a real programmer unless he understands Prolog, Haskell, C, and a flavor of Lisp (Scheme/Arc), although Python might be a good first language to start with. Be prepared to spend lots of $ on books - all of these topics have books which work for different people. I would recommend:

The Little Schemer series: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/BTLS/ and Programming in Haskell http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gmh/book.html

These are solidly good books, there are others, but they really depend on personality.

Re: Ask HN: My 13 year-old cousin hacked into his school's system. What advice would you give?

#57

Post by jimbokun »

sounddust wrote: post #12

When I was in high school, I guessed the administrator password of our computer lab (it was the administrator's daughter's first name) and basically maintained the computer lab for the rest of the semester. I never did any harm in the process. The administrator, upon finding out what I had done, recognized that I knew what I was doing, and supported my work. I fixed permissions that repaired apps that had been myster…

"When I was in high school, I guessed the administrator password of our computer lab (it was the administrator's daughter's first name)"

Holy cow, so you mean this doesn't just work in the movies, but in real life, too?

Re: Ask HN: My 13 year-old cousin hacked into his school's system. What advice would you give?

#58

Post by Beanblabber »

sounddust wrote: post #12

When I was in high school, I guessed the administrator password of our computer lab (it was the administrator's daughter's first name) and basically maintained the computer lab for the rest of the semester. I never did any harm in the process. The administrator, upon finding out what I had done, recognized that I knew what I was doing, and supported my work. I fixed permissions that repaired apps that had been myster…

When I was in elementary school around 4th , we always had to wait for the teachers/admins to come put there passwords in so we could log in. One day I just didn't want to wait. So I tried a simple password: The first letters of the schools name. Got on and did the work. The Administrator noticed she didn't have to put the password in and so later that night I got called from the school asking what I had done. I told them about it and what the password was. She was grateful since it was a password she hadn't known about, left by earlier Admins.

That was about five years ago. Today I am usually always at odds with the teachers. Either I can't sit still, I'm too quirky or snappy, or whatever the teachers want to make up. Then their computer acts up. Perfect opportunity. I go over and fix the simple problem and they now regard me as a demigod and no longer hate me.

That's how I fix my relationships with my teachers.

Re: Ask HN: My 13 year-old cousin hacked into his school's system. What advice would you give?

#59

Post by cschep »

unalone wrote: post #30
r11t wrote: post #4

The best reference I can recommend would be Eric Raymond's "How To Become A Hacker" : http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html The key point the article points out is that "The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them." The teenage thrill of breaking into computer systems is certainly exciting but perhaps he will be even more enthusiastic about learning to be curious about how things…

I have a problem with that essay. It makes good points, most of which I agree with, but Raymond states them as values to be learned without explaining why. He essentially states his own beliefs without giving reason for some of them or explaining why such mindsets are useful. (Or: he shows rather than tells.) The phrase that stands out most upon first glance is this: Similarly, to be a hacker you have to get a basic…

What is your connection to the hacker culture, if not problem solving?
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