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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)

#91

Post by philwelch »

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 appreciate your perspective.

Why should teenagers receive federally subsidized loans in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars—not dischargable even in bankruptcy—to receive such a degree? How is that a wise financial decision for a normal person rather than merely an amusing hobby for the hereditary rich?

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

#92

Post by knodi123 »

bredren wrote: post #33

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 clas…

In high school, I wrote a program that drew a realistic picture of our login screen, with two real inputs for username and password. No matter what you typed in those boxes, my program would save it to a text file in my home directory, and then log me out, which would instantly display the real login prompt.

I didn't have any real reason to steal everyone's credentials including the teacher's, but it was fun. And I would have gotten away with it, if I wasn't storing the output in a file called stolen_passwords.txt!

I got busted, and the teacher said I could either take 23 saturday detentions, or help him fix the login screen so that my attack wouldn't work anymore. I made an honest effort at the latter, and he let me off.

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

#93

Post by danesparza »

packet_nerd wrote: post #67
danesparza wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It should be about learning. I think finding exploits should be encouraged and rewarded.

Agreed.
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