Ah the old mythical tale of hacking your school to change your grades to straight A’s, well I know people do it, I’ve seen it in the past…but now someone has actually gotten caught for it.
And what’s more..he’s the senior class president!
Cooper City High School’s senior class president was arrested Tuesday and charged in a grade-tampering scandal that has rocked the campus.
Ryan C. Shrouder, 18, of Cooper City, was taken to jail from school and charged with two counts of computer crime with intent to defraud, a second-degree felony, according to a Broward Sheriff’s Office report. He was released from jail on bail, has been suspended from school and will be recommended for expulsion, said Joe Melita, head of the Broward County School District’s investigative unit.
That’s a pretty serious list of charges.
On Nov. 2, an assistant principal told authorities that the school had begun investigating unauthorized grade changes. Course grades from previous years for 19 students, mostly seniors, had been altered.
Cooper City High’s bookkeeper told investigators that in the week before the grades were changed she witnessed Shrouder in the office of the computer technology specialist looking for a “sign-on” password to the district network. The technology specialist had left his passwords on a notepad in his desk, according to the report.
Investigators later determined that the employee’s sign-on account was the same one used to access the grades program and modify the marks.
I quite often get e-mails here at Darknet with people asking me how to hack their school servers..Sadly the majority don’t want to change the grades however they just want to access MySpace.
Source: Sun Sentinel
HockeyCzarina says
How sad that the office worker had the passwords WRITTEN DOWN (isn’t that something they tell you NEVER TO DO?)
Rojo says
Well, maybe you can in some cases, but leaving the notepad before a terminal with access to the same system those passwords secure, it’s just plain stupidity, the sysadmin should be fired too.
on a second thought, maybe that was his/her “honeypot”, you now.. to caught evil hacerks….. :S sh*t…. i don’t know what i’m saying, i read too much “hackers” online scifi novels or something…
:P
HyperByte says
What an idiot if your going to change your grades you shouldn’t let anyone see you looking through an office for it and you should change lots of ther peoples grades so they dont automatically catch you.
Darknet says
From my experience doing pen tests and audits it’s sadly familiar to find a post-it note on the monitor or under the keyboard with the password written on it. Usually it’s not the fault of the user, it’s the fault of the policies, changing passwords too frequently and making complexity requirements too high makes it unreasonable for users to remember their passwords, which in turn actually makes the system less secure. But yeah this guy…wasn’t the smartest stick in the tree, he could have at least thought about it a little bit.
leetzor says
what a champ, wtf kind of IT guy is that, fire him not expell the student.
ive been expelled for hacking 3 times now :) and also suspended 13 times and told off countless times :)
Michael says
Lol, Leetzor thats not something to be proud of if you’ve been caught that many times. You need alot more practice.
grayson says
Leetzor, im suprised your admin hasn’t put you on his team yet.
I just cracked the wep key and the admin at my school said something along the lines of :
“your welcome to do it again as long as you dont screw anything up and you tell me how to fix the hole.”
Bet yall know how I spend my lunch periods.
bo says
i just got a hex editor n i was wondering how to use it it doesnt have a help file its called 0xED 2.0 for mac cuz i need to change my grades write back thanks. and i need the email of the guy who wrote the article
CodeMOnkeyt says
Problem is most computer workers have been 10 and 20 passwords, most different, all with different rules, for different purposes. How could they not write them down?
Then the personal ones for webmail, bank access, loans, libraries, credit cards, shopping, IM, school……
matrixhomie says
you should just download Windows Key if its a windows machine (300 $ program for instantly erasing any user accounts password ig. admin )
or use a multiple proxy program like Tor or Proxylist. or even goto Proxy.org if it isnt blocked.
if you dont know how to do anything computer wise, just stand behind people when they log in and write down what they typed.
eM3rC says
When doing stuff like this I think the risks outweigh the result by a vast amount. Say this “hacker” was successfully able to change his grades without the admins presence. What do you think would happen when his teachers noticed his grade/other students grades go up (could compare grade book to online grades), or the grades being updated without the teacher logging in.
Stuff like this would seem easy to catch and easy to find out who did it based on who’s grades were raised.
GoldenApollo says
my i.t. techer got my pendrive and it had aircrack and the wep keys of the school network a friend of mine put there (stupid me), i dont even have a wifi capable device or anyhting, just had it cuz my friend has a mobile that works with that and we actually needed it to do some class work (ironic), so 2moro i have a “talk” with the i.t. guy and see wat happens, does anyone know wat the consequences can be?
Pantagruel says
Mmm should have encrypted the data, but shit happens.
I am not a legal person so can only express my opinion. If you have not received any prior warning about trying to gain illegal access to the network or other computer crime related stuff, I see no need for a teacher to search your personal belongings. Eventhough a teacher may have a bit more legal statue than an ordinary citizin (also depends on the country in question), I think he is still not allowed to violate your privacy. Hope your not in Germany, software relating to cracking/etc is kinda illegal there.
Zebulon says
I really shouldn’t admit this, but I believe I’m beyond the statute of Limitations here, but when I was in high school 11 yrs ago, me and my friends did this. We were slacker stoners then, so we werent gettin good grades anyway, we were at least smart enough to not just give us sraight A’s. But anyway the point of my rant is, my Tech-Ed Teacher made the fatel mistake one day of tellin us all the computers in the whole school were networked together, I mean you could’nt get away with it now there are just too many security measures and Log Files that are self created, you would either have to be extremely stupid or extremely smart just to even try it, it just goes to show you even the good kids are bad !!!
J. Lion says
Hmmm… password left on a notepad!
Am not sure if we can call that hacking…
J. Lion says
@CodeMOnkeyt
Keepass would work better than his notepad for password management
zupakomputer says
Mmm, if you’re going to write down your password then don’t leave it lying around when you leave the room – & why was the room even unlocked with no-one in it anyway.
Sad truth about grade changing may be that they needn’t bother anyway; lots of people lie on their CVs and don’t have anything to back it up with, or they have fake paper certificates. Yet another problem of having HR depts, or agencies, handle hiring – remember the days when you’d be hired by people that actually knew the position being applied for inside-out, all it’s requirements, and exactly what they were looking for. A few choice interview questions in the subject area and they’d know straight away if you had a clue about what you claimed to know.
As far as altering grades to get into further education – it may well mean that someone more deserving loses a place on that course because of you cheating, but it doesn’t make you better at the subjects. Unless you plan on changing the grades at the college or university too…..and then – why bother doing that, when you could just fake a degree if you’re that way inclined. You’d be better off spending four years finding out how to add yourself to the database to recieve a degree off them, or just buying a fake one, if you think you can keep a job without knowing f-all about the subjects needed.
Pantagruel says
Picked up a story today of a somewhat similar ‘oeps I left a post-it with the admin pw above my tft’.
Someone was screaming hell and damnation because his pc and tft where stolen. When asked if the goods had been locked down he siad, sure, tightly to the wall using the provided cable. When asked about the where abouts of the keys to the chain, he replied,’ one in my pocket (producing the key) and the other in our key safe (showing key in key safe). When asked if the jey safe was locked that particular evening he went numb and turned pale. It’s little use to lockdown as pc+tft if you forget to close the vault containing the backup key to the lock. They where quite lucky that the thieft, apparently, was by himself. Otherwise the would have suffered a total loss of 15 pc’s+tft’s in their computing room alone.
Ofcourse I expressed my sentiments for his loss, but had a hard time not wetting myself :)
Wad It Do Baby Boo says
wow this kid must be retarded =/ why would he try to change hi grades? tahts pathetic! if your not going to try then why cheat? a lot of people will disagree with me <_< but i dont mind. im glad he got arrested.
JJ says
im sorry guys
but i think some of u are exagerating, i doubt any of u can hack school computers with such ease, multiple times. i dont think that u can call that hacking, seeing someone elses password and using it, no way. the word hacker is so overused now adays, for example, one day i opened the control panle on my school computer and i was called a hacker for the next two weeks