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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…
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But it strikes me in your original comment, you do state that what he did was wrong. Certainly, I don't advocate anything more than the OP does. This strikes me as one of those "teachable moments" that will help the kid make these sorts of judgment calls in the future.
Hm, ok I see what you mean. Let me try to rephrase what I meant: He did something that could have been considered wrong, had he been in the possession of enough common sense to figure that out by himself. As it was I think he probably just thought it was an exciting puzzle to figure out, which in and of itself is not wrong. It's up to the adults to help kids make the right judgement calls, so in this case I see it as…
As far as failed parenting...hmmm...I wouldn't go that far. Kids will make poor choices, no matter how great the parenting. I think we need to abstain from judging that without more details.
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Hm, ok I see what you mean. Let me try to rephrase what I meant: He did something that could have been considered wrong, had he been in the possession of enough common sense to figure that out by himself. As it was I think he probably just thought it was an exciting puzzle to figure out, which in and of itself is not wrong. It's up to the adults to help kids make the right judgement calls, so in this case I see it as…
I concur with your last point. As far as failed parenting...hmmm...I wouldn't go that far. Kids will make poor choices, no matter how great the parenting. I think we need to abstain from judging that without more details.
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…
What worries me the most is that his parents and school are pretty much as described in some of these comments - scared of what they don't understand. I've spoken with the parents and done my best to let them know that this is bad, yes, but not something to be punished. This kid really has a gift. I can understand their concerns, however, when he (as a 13 year old) is so sure of his talent that he considers academics unimportant.
Now that I think of it, if there is any recommended reading for the PARENTS of budding hackers? If not, that might be a good idea for someone out there...
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I guess I got lucky, or I would have been on ritalin or some other fashionable (or profitable) drug for sure. I'm 43 now, 44 in March, when I was a kid ADD did not yet 'exist', and from my experience with my sons teachers the teachers in the schools that I went to were of a better grade than the teachers he has to content with (and that have to contend with him) today. I think the latter is the biggest factor in the…
Hopefully soon there will be generation of teachers that is as fast and as smart as the kids they are trying to teach. As much as I would love to believe this, I'm at a college that's renowned for its teaching program, and teaching majors came to me for quite a lot of tech problems. (Two didn't understand basic algebra - worrysome.) The problem is that people who decide they want to become teachers very rarely work w…
That had me chuckling out loud. I think we'll see a certain game program for sale before that will happen.
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Up/down up/down, if you disagree say so. Do you take offense at my suggestion this kid did nothing wrong ? Why is that ? Enlighten me, for all I have read above the sysadmin is the person in the wrong, if a 13 year old can walk all over your system you ought to be looking for a job (and one that does not include system administration).
He didn't do any major damage What do you mean he didn't do anything wrong? If all he did was find a way into their systems and report his findings of insecurity or something, certainly there would be nothing wrong with that (as long as he's following his terms of use for the school computers, also -- he's held to the rules of the school as a student). But it appears as if he's done something, maybe he didn't report…
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Hopefully soon there will be generation of teachers that is as fast and as smart as the kids they are trying to teach. As much as I would love to believe this, I'm at a college that's renowned for its teaching program, and teaching majors came to me for quite a lot of tech problems. (Two didn't understand basic algebra - worrysome.) The problem is that people who decide they want to become teachers very rarely work w…
> 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.
Later, he was the reason I befriended a kid I'd been at odds with for years, an arrogant film buff. When we started to have extended discussions covering literature, cinema, and music, I started looking for some of the films they were mentioning, and in doing so became close friends with the film kid. It led to one of the best summers of my life, driving around the state in his Wrangler to get a copy of Spaced.
(Meanwhile, the class we met in was a half-year course filled with a ton of kids with short attention spans, and he managed to get us to read something like 7-8 books and a ton of short stories, and crammed us with 5 excellent films in between.)
How you isolate people like that and identify them, I don't know. They exist, though.
(Game program? What do you mean?)
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A long time ago my son did a similar thing. He didn't get into trouble because he told me first. We had a long adult talk about professionalism in programming. Essentially, professionals dont crack, but also about writing good code, testing, comments and such, so that it didn't come across as an adult smacking a kid. It worked, because he started taking a more mature approach to what he was doing.
To be fair, there are many professions in IT. Programming is just one of them. Computer security and system administration are two other very different ones. They don't necessary involve much "good code, testing, comments and such". On the contrary, they can involve in-depth, hands-on knowledge and experience of the kind of tools that other people will use, to be able to protect systems from them.
Don't get caught.
Whether he gets caught or not, this strikes me as a good lesson to learn before he's 18.