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9-Year-Old Boy Hacks School's Blackboard Network

by Caleb Johnson on April 15, 2010 at 06:15 PM

According to The Washington Post, a 9-year-old boy hacked into the Fairfax County, Virginia, school system's Blackboard Learning System. He changed teacher and staff passwords, edited course content and toyed with school enrollment numbers. For those who don't know, Blackboard is an online classroom where teachers can track grades and post assignments for students to complete and submit. The hack was discovered at the end of March by the school system's network security manager. This employee contacted police, who tracked down the IP address and found the computer used in the prank. After first suspecting the child's mother, police soon learned who was the real culprit. But since no real damage was done (except causing an administrative nightmare), police decided to leave the kid's punishment up to the school system. "He's a very intelligent 9-year-old with no criminal intent," Officer Don Gotthardt told the Post.

Both the school system and police have been tight-lipped about just what sort of punishment this precocious youngster has coming his way. But weighing this situation against other student hacks against school systems, it seems like this kid is getting off pretty easy. After all, a few weeks of after-school detention sure beats facing serious time in jail. [From: The Washington Post]

Update: The Washington Post reported on Friday that the boy didn't hack into the school's network. Instead, he somehow obtained a teacher's password to the Blackboard system.

Tags: blackboard, hack, hacking, network, prank, school, security, students, top

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