Hack your school

[SueEllen]

That's cos their IT security is poo

BBC News - Children hacking their own schools for 'fun', watchdog warns https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c203pedz58go

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has issued a warning about what it calls the "worrying trend" of students hacking their own school and college IT systems for fun or as part of dares.

[courtg9000]

they are behind the curve, it was 1991 when me and the lads hacked into the headmasters PC at my school!

[NotAllThere]

they are behind the curve, it was 1991 when me and the lads hacked into the headmasters PC at my school!

Kids of today. Useless.

But come on. Spill the beans. What did you do? It can't have been networked then (or barely).

[sadkingbilly]

is it a genuine Worrying Trend though?

[Protagoras]

Kids of today. Useless.

But come on. Spill the beans. What did you do? It can't have been networked then (or barely).

In those days the password was probably written down in the headmaster's desk drawer ...

[ladymuck]

I remember messing around with net send, I think it was?

[Protagoras]

We didn't have computers when I was at school. Electronic calculators were a fairly recent consumer item and even then quite expensive. HP ones at the time used that 'reverse polish' system and some of us used slide rules - because we were a bit geeky!

It was some years before I saw a networked computer; even then the networks were proprietary like Decnet and Novell. Was great fun getting these things to interoperate.

A local school issued the kids with email accounts. Seems that they all had the same default password because some of the kids were sending emails from others! Caused a level of upset. Who'd have not imagined that this would happen?

[DoctorStrangelove]

We had a calculator for statistics, it was mechanical & went ting ting ting as you rotated the handle.

I remember a salesperson demoing an electronic calculator in the physics lab at Loughborough: it was 4 function, mains powered, with ?nixie tubes? or non LED 7 segment display.

Someone with a rich dad had a Sinclair something or other a year or so later: again 4 function.

The electronics dept computer was a Modular One which used punched paper tape for everything: the vdu was an analogue display device that showed graphs on a bistable screen.

There was a chap who was writing something called a "compiler" that would run on the ICL1900 elsewhere. I wonder if he ever got it going.

None of this stuff was networked: the closest anyone ever got to hacking was a chap by the name of ?Kimble? who was alleged to have broken into the headmaster's room & looked at the upcoming GCE exam papers.

[courtg9000]

In those days the password was probably written down in the headmaster's desk drawer ...

Pretty much this

[courtg9000]

Kids of today. Useless.

But come on. Spill the beans. What did you do? It can't have been networked then (or barely).

Not much but quite a bit to be fair, another senior teacher left their room, with the PC logged in. Wasn't even win 3.1, we had a snoop around and discovered the headmasters file store - zero security, some confidential documentation might have been printed off and left lying around where a headmaster would not want. Headmaster hit the roof when he found out what happened. Never got the culprits. We certainly found out that our lunchtime smoking area had been found out.