
Schoolboy hacker Omar Khan who upped his grades faces 38 years in jail - gibsonf1
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article4168112.ece
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jamiequint
"he installed spyware on school hard drives that allowed him to access the
computers from remote locations."

Uhh. I think thats actually called a backdoor. How large has the definition of
spyware grown nowadays?

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jauco
about as large as the definition of 'hacker'

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mootpoint
See, if you are going to hack your grade, you do this: 1) Change some of your
bad grades to better ones 2) LOWER some of your higher grades 3) Do this for
others people's grade 4) Don't be greedy and make large changes. No Fs to As

If such a change is detected, the blame wouldn't fall on you. It seems that
all those crackers are very short sighted and fail to think their plan though.

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PStamatiou
"prosecutors claim that he then used teachers’ passwords to hack into
computers and change his test scores"

is it really hacking if you have the password?

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nertzy
A lot of people would consider social engineering part of hacking.

Either way, a hacker doesn't feel the artificial limitation of rules. He had a
mission to complete, and he had the passwords to help him complete it, so he
took the simple path. Sounds like a hacker to me.

That said, the punishment does not fit the crime.

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motoko
This is outrageous. 38 years (or even 1 year) for fiddling with high school
grades? Really?

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noonespecial
Too true, Back in my day, when we cheated, they just failed you and made you
do it again. Repeat a year, or get out of jail when you're 50-something for
something you did in HS; choices.

Zero tolerance and all that yap, I guess. Wouldn't want him to grow up and
become a tur-rist.

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petercooper
If only the penalty for lying on your résumé were as harsh.

