I sorted some of my work product with bubble sort (I wrote maintenance procedures and docs for a defense contractor), in 1982 or 3; I figured out bubble sort "all by myself". I don't remember the mini-computer or the language. The system admin visited me and told me not to do that anymore. I went to school after that (where I learned that it was called bubble sort).
When You Accidentally Break Your School Network in 1995
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Re: When You Accidentally Break Your School Network in 1995
#12Way back in 1988, I was in the sixth form of a school in the UK (that's for students aged 16-18). We had a bunch of BBC Micros networked together using Acorn EcoNet.
Very detailed manuals for everything were just on a shelf in the classroom.
I forgot how we did it, but we wrote something that gave us access to the place where the passwords were stored on the master server. I also forget why we did this, but somehow we accidentally deleted the master password file.
We were still logged into the system, but panic set in. We logged out...
...and of course we could not log back in. Nobody could log in.
We owned up right away. The difference between mine and the OP's story is I just had a very stern talking to from the headmaster and strongly worded letter home! He did admit he was quite impressed but suggest we channel our talents into less destructive projects.
Network was down for a day while it was completely reinstalled!
Re: When You Accidentally Break Your School Network in 1995
#13One tech savvy friend was called in for questioning and told that he was going to be blamed for everything and that they had enough information to prove it was him even if it wasn’t. He was going to be expelled unless he had any information that he could share to prove otherwise.
Classic interrogation technique. I also learned a lot about how police states work when I was in high school.
Re: When You Accidentally Break Your School Network in 1995
#14Stuff like this is still happening. I graduated high school in 2012. During our final semester, my friend decided to try logging in to the school router. He thought it would be passworded, but it was completely open. He shared this info with me and a couple other friends.
We had fun for a bit restarting the router when we wanted to mess with a boring teacher, but eventually one of them set a password, the school IT guy found himself locked out, and I found myself getting threatened with expulsion. The principal interrogated me and asked if I knew what port scanning was, and even accused me of lying when I said I didn't (I really didn't!). I told him as much as I knew - which wasn't much - because I didn't want to get expelled a few months before graduating.
Long story short, the friend that set the password got expelled, the one that found the vulnerability got suspended for a week, and everyone else got off scot-free. I heard a year or two later they started offering programming classes there.
Re: When You Accidentally Break Your School Network in 1995
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how many similar stories there are out there and how they were handled. Good times they were not, though. As a kid who didn't have bad intentions, dealing with the repercussions was a lot. There was no precedent (at my school, at that time) for how to prevent and deal with a situation like that, though.
"I wonder how many similar stories there are out there and how they were handled." In-school suspension and police interrogation for me on different occasions. In each, I had actually done nothing but was smart and could have done something. The first was actually a setup by the most notorious hacker in the school who I was showing up a bit with my demos. He had some script downloading and popping up porn on my compu…
In each, I had actually done nothing but was smart and could have done something.
I had the experience in high school in the 90's of being wrongly accused of computer mischief solely on the grounds that I might be capable of such. I was astounded that merely possessing knowledge would be sufficient for such an accusation. Thankfully, no suspensions or police involvement came out of it.
Re: When You Accidentally Break Your School Network in 1995
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I wonder how many similar stories there are out there and how they were handled." In-school suspension and police interrogation for me on different occasions. In each, I had actually done nothing but was smart and could have done something. The first was actually a setup by the most notorious hacker in the school who I was showing up a bit with my demos. He had some script downloading and popping up porn on my compu…
In each, I had actually done nothing but was smart and could have done something. I had the experience in high school in the 90's of being wrongly accused of computer mischief solely on the grounds that I might be capable of such. I was astounded that merely possessing knowledge would be sufficient for such an accusation. Thankfully, no suspensions or police involvement came out of it.
In the police case, I got questioned a while. They figured out it was bullshit. Told me to watch what I say. (Never got hood at hiding opinions or skill lol...) Cop then just bought me a drink and hung out with me until next class. Got a bit lucky there. :)
Re: When You Accidentally Break Your School Network in 1995
#17I sorted some of my work product with bubble sort (I wrote maintenance procedures and docs for a defense contractor), in 1982 or 3; I figured out bubble sort "all by myself". I don't remember the mini-computer or the language. The system admin visited me and told me not to do that anymore. I went to school after that (where I learned that it was called bubble sort).
Hah. Any idea why the system admin didn't want you to bubble sort anymore?
Was it noticed to be taxing on some system's resources or too long-running of a process or something?
Re: When You Accidentally Break Your School Network in 1995
#18One tech savvy friend was called in for questioning and told that he was going to be blamed for everything and that they had enough information to prove it was him even if it wasn’t. He was going to be expelled unless he had any information that he could share to prove otherwise. Classic interrogation technique. I also learned a lot about how police states work when I was in high school.
Thank you for voting, comrade :)
Re: When You Accidentally Break Your School Network in 1995
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I wonder how many similar stories there are out there and how they were handled." In-school suspension and police interrogation for me on different occasions. In each, I had actually done nothing but was smart and could have done something. The first was actually a setup by the most notorious hacker in the school who I was showing up a bit with my demos. He had some script downloading and popping up porn on my compu…
In each, I had actually done nothing but was smart and could have done something. I had the experience in high school in the 90's of being wrongly accused of computer mischief solely on the grounds that I might be capable of such. I was astounded that merely possessing knowledge would be sufficient for such an accusation. Thankfully, no suspensions or police involvement came out of it.
This happened to me in highschool in the 90s too. There were several Mac laptops available for students to check out of the library, on one occasion someone changed all the desktop icons on one of them to little piles of shit. I was an immediate suspect because I brought my own laptop to school and people had seen me using a terminal. For some reason they didn't think to look at the list of people who had actually checked out the "hacked" laptop, which obviously didn't include me. My fate was sealed when they asked to see my school-issued floppy disk and found a picture of a mushroom cloud on it (part of a hypercard presentation on environmental destruction). I ended up getting a 3 day suspension and being barred from using the school laptops that I had never used anyway.
Re: When You Accidentally Break Your School Network in 1995
#20A friend of mine installed sub7 back then in the school network and tried to host a starcraft server. Didn't work out, for some reason- but yeah, that's youth. To criminalize such creative vandalism, wouldn't help anybody.