Canadian teen charged with school board hack

A 15-year-old who allegedly broke into a school board website before exposing the passwords of 27,000 fellow schoolchildren has been charged with computer hacking offences. The unnamed Ontario youngster from the Thames Valley area had earlier claimed that he had only carried out the hack to expose the board's weak security. …

[Anonymous Coward]

Bit of burke!

Old enough and daft enough to know it was wrong and you don't break into somewhere to prove bad security without having first asked permission to test the security.

Well done kiddo, you've knacked your chances of a job in IT then.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Paging Matthew Broderick

If you get pwned by 14-year olds in 2010, it should be the school's IT cavemen who have knackered theirs.

In their defense, it may be the math prof doing the job on the side.

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh???

You call secondary school teachers Professor?????

Seriously????

[Fizzl]

What? No!

He's a school child, by definition he is not old enough to know better or be responsible. Schools who resort to the legal system to enforce school discipline have lost the plot.

When I was that age I got caught doing far worse to school computers just for the hell of it. I got detention and banned from the computer room for a few weeks.

[eJ2095]

God carnt get the staff these days

Used to to this kind of thing at my old school under the old Acron Arcs with there dodgy econet network..

What fun

[Christoph]

Exposing the passwords?

Did they store the passwords unencrypted? If so it's them that needs the swift kick.

[Frank Bitterlich]

"Using a password to commit a computer offence..."

Funny charges they have these days. Coming up next: "Using the Return key to commit a computer offence".

[sumguy99]

Daily Rotation identifiying this story as "UK Teen charged..."

Daily Rotation is headlining this story as "UK Teen Charged with school board hack" and pointing to this Register page (which correctly identifies the teen as Canadian).

The teen in question comes from a broken family (single mom living with boyfriend) and has little structure in his life. He has several times tried to explain and show school board IT people how insecure their servers are, and his public exposure of 27k student ID/Passwords was the final attempt to wake them up. I heard all this on the local radio news broadcast this morning - this story happened in my city - London ONTARIO, a much better version of London England, complete with the Thames river.

(I don't know why the school board needs to operate a central IT infrastructure for students in this day an age when they can get gmail and facebook for free from the private sector - another waste of school-board tax dollars as the electronic hand-holding and page turning in schools continues to get out of control - but at least we don't have electronic face recognition here like you do in schools in the UK).

[Sarah Bee]

Re: Daily Rotation identifiying this story as "UK Teen charged..."

We've fixed the error now - thank you.

[Allan George Dyer]

But I was still wondering...

was he an exchange student? You don't actually state that the Thames Valley in question was not the original.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes

Why have an IT infrastructure in an era where you can get Facebook for free?

Answers on a postcard ...

[The Other Steve]

Harsh, but ...

I think prosecution is harsh, but I'm afraid that the "exposure of 27k student ID/Passwords", means that it is also fair. Lets hope the judge doesn't come down on him to heavily.

[Version 1.0]

Make the punishment fit the crime

1000 lines, to be written in pencil, double spaced, "I must not hack into the school computer system"

[Anonymous Coward]

15 Year old, not lines.

A big hand written essay on what needs to be done to fix the problem, and what would have happened if they had put him through the justice system.

Teachers these days have NO imagination.

(Econet, cleaners thinking you have permission, physical access, those were some fun times...)

[RayG]

Count me as one more for "grotesquely excessive overreaction"

A kid, idiot school techs - this is a slap on the wrist offence, not a matter for charges.

Overreaction is, of course, business as usual for both the law and school authorities.

[JaitcH]

Is there a Boy Scout's badge for this?

As a juvenile he will get kissed by the judge.

Those who should be fired and charged are the incompetent 'experts' who draw massive salaries and can't even secure a server.

[Gilbert Wham]

Well they must have been *trying*

I mean, where do you even GET software that stores passwords unencrypted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Software?

password.doc

[Al 4]

Can the staff

The problem is the ones that should be canned will try and have the strongest charges applied to try and make it look like they're doing something about a problem that wouldn't/shouldn't have existed in the first place if it wasn't due to their incompetence.

[Winkypop]

Back in my school days...

I got busted changing the beads on the abacus, no harm came from it.

But I did have to light the schools gas-lamps for a week....

[Pandy06269]

US legal system favours IT techies

IT developers write software that allows a school kid to crack it - let's punish the kid.

IT department uses built-in camera in PC to take thousands of photos of kiddies at home - let's give them a slap on the hand and tell them not to do it again.

IT techies have it easy with the US legal system.