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Sh1mmer – An exploit capable of unenrolling enterprise-managed Chromebooks

sh1mmer.me

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Re: Sh1mmer – An exploit capable of unenrolling enterprise-managed Chromebooks

#131

Post by psychphysic »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #60
Retric wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

School should be preparing people for the “real world” after graduation. Learning to think on the computer is a useful skill and 6th graders US (11 year olds are year 7 in UK) have had half a decade of paper instruction. So making the jump at 11 is perfectly reasonable. Chromebook is simply cheap to buy and manage. The point of these is a simple tool, little different than a calculator. If Google offends you feel fre…

Handwritten note taking is just better for retaining information. Why would you move to something inferior in sixth grade?

Doing calculations on paper is better for arithmetics. But a calculator is better than humans at that and at some point you need to move on from long division and box multiplication.

Same here.

Re: Sh1mmer – An exploit capable of unenrolling enterprise-managed Chromebooks

#132

Post by knodi123 »

DharmaPolice wrote: post #88

I wouldn't have a career in IT if I hadn't spent many hours at ages 11 to 15 trying to get round my schools network security. My logon was frequently disabled for misuse and I was even suspended for a couple of days once but I learnt more that way than in any class I've ever taken.

Exact same story. I was having way too easy a time in my comp sci class in high school, so I wrote a program that simulated our login screen, saved whatever you typed into the box to a text file in my home dir, gave the "bad username or password" error, and then seamlessly sent you to the real login screen.

After a week, I'd stolen the credentials of everyone in my class and the class after mine. And then, I did... nothing with it, because I was already able to finish the homework in class and had a high grade.

The teacher busted me because I had a file in my home dir called stolen_passwords.txt. But instead of punishing me, he made me help him patch all the security flaws I'd exploited. It inspired my decision to go to college for comp sci. Best high school teacher ever. (a few years later, I had graduated with a comp sci degree. and he was trying to recruit me into selling amway. oh well.)

Re: Sh1mmer – An exploit capable of unenrolling enterprise-managed Chromebooks

#133

Post by philipphutterer »

kab0b wrote: post #113
DharmaPolice wrote: post #88

I wouldn't have a career in IT if I hadn't spent many hours at ages 11 to 15 trying to get round my schools network security. My logon was frequently disabled for misuse and I was even suspended for a couple of days once but I learnt more that way than in any class I've ever taken.

I was really lucky that our Computer Teacher/IT guy (this was back in the early 2000s) was really cool and allowed us a bit of leeway to break things. After the first time we got caught (there was three of us) he sat down with us, and essentially gave us some rules of engagement, anything we got around, or defeated we had to write up a short report and turn it into him, explaining what we were able to accomplish, the…

That sounds like this teacher understood what teaching means other than presenting the curriculum. Love it.

Re: Sh1mmer – An exploit capable of unenrolling enterprise-managed Chromebooks

#134

Post by knodi123 »

bertil wrote: post #119

I stand with everyone on Hacker News in admiration for young’uns sticking it to the man and learning about command-line secret power. _However_, I’m a little more ambivalent knowing that most of them do that to look at naked ladies, presumably. Maybe create pictures of naked ladies (again: very impressed by Generative AI, with the caveat that it’s widely used for pr0n) That doesn’t feel ideal for the emotional matura…

> In my time ::shakes fists at cloud::, hacking the school network meant you risk exposing yourself to people with strong opinions about plot points in Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

lol. In my time, hacking the school network meant you could access programs that belonged to other schools, or print to their printers. And that was pretty much it.

Re: Sh1mmer – An exploit capable of unenrolling enterprise-managed Chromebooks

#135

Post by logifail »

icepat wrote: post #73
Symbiote wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your case is very unusual, and should be dealt with separately. It's not at all reasonable to make generalizations to all children from a single neurodivergent child. (In England your teacher would ask the school's special education teacher for advice. You might end up with a laptop, or something else that helps, essentially on prescription from an educational psychologist. Class teachers would be given guidance on w…

Not saying it is not, but what I am saying is that you should be allowed whatever learning tools work best for you. A blanket ban on computers and insisting on hand written notes, is just no good. Forcing children to manage bureaucracy to get a simple laptop in class is also senseless. > In England your teacher would ask the school's special education teacher for advice In Canada, they just said I wasn't trying hard…

> I am saying is that you should be allowed whatever learning tools work best for you. A blanket ban on computers and insisting on hand written notes, is just no good.

Umm, not sure whether I agree with this.

Don't we expect children to learn basic mathematics without access to a calculator? This despite the fact that there are certainly children who struggle with laborious long multiplication and division. Our eldest was one of them!

Re: Sh1mmer – An exploit capable of unenrolling enterprise-managed Chromebooks

#136

Post by comice »

knodi123 wrote: post #132
DharmaPolice wrote: post #88

I wouldn't have a career in IT if I hadn't spent many hours at ages 11 to 15 trying to get round my schools network security. My logon was frequently disabled for misuse and I was even suspended for a couple of days once but I learnt more that way than in any class I've ever taken.

Exact same story. I was having way too easy a time in my comp sci class in high school, so I wrote a program that simulated our login screen, saved whatever you typed into the box to a text file in my home dir, gave the "bad username or password" error, and then seamlessly sent you to the real login screen. After a week, I'd stolen the credentials of everyone in my class and the class after mine. And then, I did... n…

lol I did exactly this at school too. My first version wrote the passwords to local disk and whenever I logged in anywhere myself my login script would gather them up. Til I realised I could leave myself logged in and write to my home dir.

I love how this same vulnerability was discovered independently and exploited by students all around the world!

Re: Sh1mmer – An exploit capable of unenrolling enterprise-managed Chromebooks

#137

Post by duxup »

DharmaPolice wrote: post #88

I wouldn't have a career in IT if I hadn't spent many hours at ages 11 to 15 trying to get round my schools network security. My logon was frequently disabled for misuse and I was even suspended for a couple of days once but I learnt more that way than in any class I've ever taken.

My son (in jr high) updates me daily on his and other kids efforts to play games at school.

Re: Sh1mmer – An exploit capable of unenrolling enterprise-managed Chromebooks

#138

Post by madoublet »

fruit2020 wrote: post #27
madoublet wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think everyone agrees.

My daughter is 8 and already has a chromebook at school. I freaked out when she started to search stuff on Google at home on the ipad. Need to look into parental controls.

Learned that the hard way with my kids. Google Family Link is awesome. Apple Screen Time is adequate.

Re: Sh1mmer – An exploit capable of unenrolling enterprise-managed Chromebooks

#139

Post by M1m1c »

westurner wrote: post #129
M1m1c wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I relate to this. As someone currently in high school, messing around with web proxies and code deployment sights, and web-based IDE's trying to run Dwarf Fortress in my school browser has taught me more about computers and networks then just about anything else. It is painfully easy to get around school filters these days. I've never really messed with unenrollment because you do need enrollment to access the testin…

Chromebooks don't even have a Terminal for the kids. Vim's great, but VScode with Jupyter Notebook support would make the computers we bought for them into great offline calculators, too. VSCode on a Chromebook requires VMs and Containers which require "Developer Tools" and "Powerwash"; or the APK repack of VSCodium that you can't even sideload and manually update sometimes (because it's not on the 15-30% cut, and mu…

I actually use a Web Assembly port of VIM on my school computer.
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