How much does your kid hate exams? This lad hacked his government to skip them

A teenager from Sri Lanka is in hot water after he admitted to hacking the website of the nation's president in order to get his exams cancelled. The local Daily News reports that the 17-year-old, whose name was not released, accessed the official site of President Maithripala Sirisena – president.gov.lk – and replaced the …

[Anonymous Coward]

If the exam was in something computer related...

He gets a pass from me. Of course the web site hacked gets a fail.

I am posting this anonymously to get the Guy Fawkes icon, which appears to be the proper one for this lad's work.

[MrT]

"I asked for a car...

...I got a computer. How's that for being born under a bad sign?"

[psychonaut]

Re: "I asked for a car...

Voodoo economics

[iRadiate]

Re: "I asked for a car...

These days there's not much of a difference. With the amount of tech in cars now they're basically computers with 4 wheels.

[DJV]

Re: "I asked for a car...

And both are prone to crashing!

[Alien8n]

Re: "I asked for a car...

"And both are prone to crashing!"

Yes, but with the car you get a red screen of death instead of a blue one (unless the driver happens to be a smurf)

[Anonymous Blowhard]

Re: "I asked for a car...

"These days there's not much of a difference"

Try driving to Tesco in a Dell...

[Anonymous South African Coward]

Good old Charles Omputer - teaching kids allsorts of trickses.

Unfortunately hiding their IP address is not one of the tricks.

Maybe an introduction to Roger Amchip will help?

[Woza]

Or perhaps working via /dev/rroger ?

[Pascal Monett]

All that work just to postpone an exam

And a passing smirk about security to justify the act.

Here's another idea : study more, so the exam won't be an issue and you can have fun on your New Year.

Wasn't smart enough to think of that, eh ?

[Frank Leonhardt]

Cyber-crime or political graffiti (in the proud tradition of students everywhere)?

Hang on a minute - was this a criminal act carried out to avoid taking an examination (okay, it probably was, technically), or a protest about the Sri Lankan government's lack of consideration for religious minority views?

Coverage hereabouts is condemning the individual for cyber-crime or being lazy. I looks to me more like political graffiti drawing attention to a grievance.The web site is NOT the story.

Do I personally have any truck with religious "rights"? That's another matter, but I like to think I'm balanced when commenting on them.

[XSV1]

Job offer

I have an internship position available for the man!

[Mark Simon]

Re: Job offer

If by that you’re going to offer to train him properly, maybe.

Hacking into the Sri Lankan Government web site is hardly shows any signs of integrity, skill or intelligence. He got caught, and clearly doesn’t have the intelligence to do something more useful either with his skills or his time.

[Francis Boyle]

Re: Job offer

Yeah, successful "hacking" requires not getting caught. It's kinda important.

[h4rm0ny]

I kind of feel that like in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, any student of the Assassin's Guild who managed to kill their examiner got an automatic pass, that this student has demonstrated their aptitude already.

[Schlimnitz]

But

Will he still have to pass the exam in prison?

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

Re: But

Well, he'll have quite a lot of time for his revisions in the klinc.

[Crisp]

This is how it starts...

Next thing you know he's hacking a government supercomputer and starting world war 3.

[Loyal Commenter]

Re: This is how it starts...

How about a nice game of tic-tac-toe instead?

[dembadger]

There's precedent.

This was after all how Kirk passed his Kobayashi Maru exam.

Promote that kid to Captain.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: There's precedent.

@AC

Promote that kid to Captain.

And even a (former Sri Lankan) President's Sons, promoted to Captain *

Yoshitha Rajapaksa and his brother Rohitha Rajapaksa lost their captaincy of the Navy rugby team and the Army rugby team respectively after they were under probe for using assets under their fathers presidency. They were asked by authorities not to attend practices until further notice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshitha_Rajapaksa

*purely on merit I believe. I also believe in Father Christmas

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

Re: There's precedent. / Wasn't this?

No and no. And while we're at it, no.

JTK actually hacked the computer and tampered with the test program*. This kid did the IT equivalent of a graffitti on a toilet wall. The links to the relevant xkcd cartoons have already been posted; just scroll down a bit.

* Actually, he didn't. Because he's a fictional character from a TV show.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite what the headline implied...

I was expecting to read that the kid had hacked into the computer controlling exam schedules and allocations and altered them. It appears he "merely" broke into a public-facing promotional site and posted a protest; fair enough, but not really in the same ballpark.

And now... the Obligatory XKCD.

And now... the Relevant XKCD.

[david 12]

Exam bomb threats

-- were common enough at my university that we actually had a separate protocol for "bomb threat" and "bomb threat at examination center during examination period"

[Jerry G.]

Interesting Talent!

I am sure that when this kid gets out of trouble, or serves his time, or whatever, he will have some interesting job offers.