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How we hacked Blackboard and changed our grades (2018)

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Re: How we hacked Blackboard and changed our grades (2018)

#31

Post by hombre_fatal »

viklove wrote: post #11
onemoresoop wrote: post #6

Changing your grades may look like a thrill now but in the long run you're only screwing yourselves.

Yeah earning that A in Sociology 101 really changed my life's trajectory.

Exercising your ability to sit down and Just Do It instead of giving into shortcut temptations probably did change your life trajectory over the years.

Also, seems like a weird bar. I doubt any single class "changed your life trajectory." Why would it need to? I could say that about very few things in life.

But I get it, liberal arts bad, STEM good.

Re: How we hacked Blackboard and changed our grades (2018)

#32

Post by sylk »

Loughla wrote: post #19
danaur wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow could you explain?

The theory of higher education and a liberal arts degree, is what I'm assuming OP is talking about. The idea of a liberal arts degree at a university is to create a well-rounded individual. The idea of taking classes outside your major is to learn about life. The idea of even going to college (which is ENTIRELY optional) is to learn. Not just to pass classes and get an A. This is something that, traditionally, CS and…

I get where your coming from, but with college being so expensive why would I want to pay to be a well rounded individual? It's a waste of resources, I'd rather pay for something that gets me a job.

I know too many "WELL ROUNDED" individuals since that's what you've called them, that make next to dust for a paycheck. But good thing they have their spirits and each other, cause it sure does suck being poor alone.

Re: How we hacked Blackboard and changed our grades (2018)

#33

Post by bredren »

When I was in high school, the “good” PCs were locked with a boot password. Only upper level cs students could use them.

It was somewhat annoying to have to get our teacher to enter the password each time it froze etc. Partially because higher level classes were all individual study and often math classes were in progress in the same room. So it could take a while to get the teacher’s attention.

So one time some classmates switched the keyboards between two computers and handed one to the teacher to enter the password.

As the characters appeared in plaintext, another student typed the characters into the boot screen as fast as possible.

The boot password was passed down as a secret between juniors and seniors for years.

Re: How we hacked Blackboard and changed our grades (2018)

#34

Post by jerf »

Loughla wrote: post #19
danaur wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow could you explain?

The theory of higher education and a liberal arts degree, is what I'm assuming OP is talking about. The idea of a liberal arts degree at a university is to create a well-rounded individual. The idea of taking classes outside your major is to learn about life. The idea of even going to college (which is ENTIRELY optional) is to learn. Not just to pass classes and get an A. This is something that, traditionally, CS and…

"trade school is cheaper, and boot camps are shorter in duration."

Right now, they are quite inferior. Not because they are necessarily bad, but just, they don't last long enough to cover what a computer science education does. (Being in mind I am aware that "computer science" and "programming" aren't even really the same thing.) I think, without judging it good or bad, if something could fill in the gulf between the 4-year rounded degree and its computer programming content and the 8-week bootcamp a lot of people would be interested in it, but there's a lot of activation energy required there.

When I took computer science 20 years ago, it was only marginally related to "programming", and it has gotten much worse since then, because "programming" hasn't exactly changed but all the stuff around it has. "Deploying" used to be copying over the directory full of .ASP or .PHP files and maybe restarting the server, not committing to source control, handling a PR, running through CI, open source compliance analysis, and sundry other automated things, to be package up to something that we use devops tools to manage deploying, etc. etc. I'd love a new graduate who came to me with enough programming skills to prove they can do it, but knew source control, monitoring, basic commit hygiene, and the dozen other skills you need to have nowadays to get anything released to the public. You'll learn none of that in college.

And I'm not even saying you necessarily "should". But you definitely don't.

Re: How we hacked Blackboard and changed our grades (2018)

#35

Post by danesparza »

XIVMagnus wrote: post #10
tomatohs wrote: post #9

When I was a junior, I mentioned to my housemate that I had forgot my Blackboard password. "It's just your birthday" he said, and I looked at him shocked. 30 Minutes later I was in my professor's account. Their birthday month and day were public on Facebook, so it was only a matter of guessing their age. I reported this to our IT department and they were not pleased. They let me know they had the power to expel me bu…

I have and forever will find it extremely stupid to threaten someone with expelling them for trying to HELP you do your job.

School (the institution) is not about learning. School (the institution) is about conformity. And finding exploits is anything BUT conformity.

Re: How we hacked Blackboard and changed our grades (2018)

#36

Post by danesparza »

mnky9800n wrote: post #4
antsar wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse, > 02/27: Attended conference call with Blackboard and NTNU to explain exploit > Blackboard stopped responding to our e-mails 02/28.

If they were American they would probably be in prison now.

I don't understand this comment. Blackboard has headquarters in Washington D.C.

Re: How we hacked Blackboard and changed our grades (2018)

#37

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

XIVMagnus wrote: post #10
tomatohs wrote: post #9

When I was a junior, I mentioned to my housemate that I had forgot my Blackboard password. "It's just your birthday" he said, and I looked at him shocked. 30 Minutes later I was in my professor's account. Their birthday month and day were public on Facebook, so it was only a matter of guessing their age. I reported this to our IT department and they were not pleased. They let me know they had the power to expel me bu…

I have and forever will find it extremely stupid to threaten someone with expelling them for trying to HELP you do your job.

Having worked for a public school district, it is my experience that things almost never go down as parent said. What actually happens is that they get caught and make an excuse (I was about to report it!) or their "report" of the problem is in the form of some leet-speak shit-talk on a public message board. A common theme you'll notice when people describe these events, even from their own perspective, is how they absolutely did change something, deface the page, etc.

Re: How we hacked Blackboard and changed our grades (2018)

#39

Post by hombre_fatal »

danesparza wrote: post #36
mnky9800n wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were American they would probably be in prison now.

I don't understand this comment. Blackboard has headquarters in Washington D.C.

Those who hacked it (TFA) were not.

Re: How we hacked Blackboard and changed our grades (2018)

#40

Post by tombert »

I remember when I was a teenager in high school, I found out that ftp..net was open, with the login of "admin" and password of "admin".

I wasn't able to figure out how to change my grades (and I would like to think that I wouldn't have even if I could have), but I did find a directory of all their registered software that I was able to download, and the teachers' profile pages were editable. If I recall, I think I edited the profile of one teacher (that I was reasonably certain wouldn't get me in trouble if I got caught) to end with "Mr. is a goofball".

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