My story for today: I got banned from using the school computers for an indefinite
period of time.
I guess this all began last Tuesday. It was during a "Tech Team"
meeting, and I was just playing around on the computer, looking for security
flaws so that I could report them to Mr. Reynolds. During this time, I discovered
the publicly accessible folders problem. I asked Mr. Reynolds (the computer
lab supervisor) about it, and he said that it had been like that for a while.
Of course, this was a pretty big concern to me, but I just accepted it at first
and went about my business, further investigating the extent of this problem.
In doing this further investigation, I discovered that teacher's folders were
publicly accessible, and immediately brought this to Mr. Reynolds' attention.
He called in a higher admin, Mark somethingorrather, and he asked me how I did
it. I went back, and showed him how I did. After this, he acknowledged the problem
(students access to their own grades) and went back to the server closet, presumably
to fix it.
The next day, the teachers' folders were now protected, yet the students' folders
remained open. On Wednesday, the day being discussed, I did little more to further
my investigation of blatant security holes. Consider the following analogy.
We as students know that we don't have a right to privacy of files, from
administration. The same applies to lockers, and their contents. The school
can search them as they see fit, however, the locks are there if the students
care to keep their peers out. So, why then, did the administration suddenly
deny the students locks?
Anyhow, Thursday is when the proverbial shit hit the fan. Thursday after school,
Alex Tyo and I were in the computer lab, spending some time further delving
into the limits of our illegitimate access. A couple of friends were there too,
and we were all just hanging around, the friends doing work, me and Alex investigating
the flaw. So anyhow, even though we know that the teacher folders appear to
be protected, we keep on tinkering around, and discover what may have developed
into a greater flaw. What prevented further knowledge is the fact that shortly
after we alerted Ms. Brooks (the teacher in the room) that we may have found
another flaw, she called in Mr. Reynolds, who promptly kicked us out of the
computer lab, and made sure that for the rest of the day, we couldn't go near
any of the computers.
Ok, so fast forward to today. Today, during school, during the first couple
periods, Alex gets nabbed by the Vice Principal to begin interrogation / accusation.
He has to leave for a Spanish test, comes back later during the day, comes out
banned from computer use. The following period, I get called in, get accused
of many violations of acceptable use, all of which, in my mind, are either bogus
threats used for intimidation purpose (i.e. Blogger during school, outside e-mail
even under extreme circumstances, etc., bogus because many many many people
do this stuff, yet I get crap for it...) or attacks that are unfounded, unreasonable,
and based on rules that are unjust. Anyhow, I come out of this meeting confused,
preoccupied with the fact that I may have missed my only ride home, and banned
from school computer use.
Now, time to clear something up that a lot of people (including the administration)
have harassed me about. Inculcation.Net. This website, prior to it's apparent
deconstruction in light of the proverbial shit hitting the proverbial fan, was
basically a place where somebody, whom even I do not know, contrary to
popular belief, put together a means for collaboration on various assignments,
as well as a forum for complaining about school. There was collaboration on
Economics current events quizzes, and there was collaboration on English Vocabulary
assignments. Then there was the post that seems to have fanned the flames of
this ever growing problem. The post basically detailed how to abuse the security
flaw, and encouraged nondestructive abuse as well.
Anyhow, this post now forever lost with the exception of the people who printed
it, saved it, or authored it, was printed and used during the interrogation
of myself and Alex Tyo. We were asked questions like "Did you publicize
this?" or "Did you contribute in any way to authoring this?"
Connected to this issue is the fact that apparently a lot of students seem to
think that I am responsible for the maintenance of Inculcation.net. This is
simply NOT TRUE. Here's what happened, in full, in spite of whatever I may have
told you before, seeing as I've been spreading a lot of stories in order to
perpetuate the shroud of mystery.
I started this with the intent to do stuff like Economics commodities, and
I didn't know if that would be against any school policy, so I set up the domain,
the hosting, the blogger account, etc. However, I never really took any substantial
action in this regard. Here is where stories start to blur. I got an e-mail
from some random freemail account (something@hotmail.com, I forget, and it's
no longer in my Inbox) saying they'd take over. I was more than happy to oblige.
I gave them the information they needed to take full control, passwords, account
names, etc. And within a few days, I couldn't do anything more, during this
time period, I also removed myself from the blogger account I had created, because
they way I figured, I don't want accountability for this.
So anyhow, I kept on developing HTML stuff, like the implementation of the
discussion board, etc., but really, it was just an e-mail address. non_compos_mentis_insurgent@hotmail.com.
That's all I really knew about this person, and continues to remain all I really
know. So, simply put, the person behind Inculcation.net is unknown to me. Yes,
I've contributed a lot to discussion boards, and yes, I'll admit, I played a
major role in it's creation, I'm sure, but I am not responsible what did get
posted there about school network security. Maybe indirectly, because I did
tell a few people who asked me how it's done, when I told them their files were
accessible. Is it really a crime to let people know that their files are open?
I, for one, had a lot of files I deleted immediately upon finding out, because
there were a lot of files I was simply uncomfortable having my peers have access
too. I don't mind if the administration can see it, but other students?
Anyhow, I hope that this has cleared up any confusion. I think I'm certainly
not done with this. Another quick issue... on my report card, for what was originally
a pass/fail course, I got a grade. A shitty grade at that. Nobody was told this
was going to be a grade. I'm contesting that too. Aw damn. I just submitted
an opinion article complaining about student government too. Damn, my school
is gonna hate me.
One more thing: Question of the day: Can I be held accountable for information
posted on my own website? I mean, that's totally out of school, and really beyond
their jurisdiction, I would think. If they're persecuting kids on the grounds
of what's on their website, that's really fucked.
