Monologueing at Students

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BobbyK
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Joined: Sat Aug 16, 2008 12:56 pm

Monologueing at Students

Post by BobbyK »

A Q&A Session with high school students about information security just isn't complete without the one student that you are dead certain you'll be asked questions about in front of a Grand Jury.
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randy
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Location: EM79VQ

Re: Monologueing at Students

Post by randy »

FIL had a few students along those lines. One "stumbled" into the backdoor of a major local corporation system (back in 80's when it was being done with modems). He was smart enough to stop and go to FIL and discuss what he almost did.

I got a phone call asking if there should be any concern about a number that hooked into an organization at the local air base called "OSI". :shock:

Based on that conversation I think they burned the printout and the floppy disk. I do know there was a discreet call made to the head of involved corp's security that they might want to re-think their COMSEC and other security procedures.

I think the student is now making a good living as a programmer with an interest in security issues out in Silicon Valley.
...even before I read MHI, my response to seeing a poster for the stars of the latest Twilight movies was "I see 2 targets and a collaborator".
Aesop
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Re: Monologueing at Students

Post by Aesop »

When I, as a complete non-computer student and college sophomore (and whose only experience with computers prior had been as a computer science major for about a semester, and the occasional lunchtime game of "Lunar Lander" or "Hammurabi" after feeding the carefully venerated punch tape into the reader in high school), successfully hacked the entire mainframe of the college I was attending, including grades, financial accounts, and the accounts of every professor and student on campus, with absolutely no malicious intent, just by trying, I realized how oxymoronic "computer security" was (and is), and backed away from the box completely to go pursue other far less dangerous pursuits, like girls, and later killing people and blowing shit up, while the rest of my brain grew in.

(Full disclosure: I did make one upperclassman's thesis files disappear for about 10 minutes, unbeknownst to him, because he was an egregious dick, and then I put them all right back once he went to cry "wolf!" Which then made him look like a stupid egregious dick.)

At that point in history, it was a "just because I could" sort of thing, and the worst thing they could have done was kick me out.
AFAIK now, if someone did it today, it would be about 17 different state and federal felonies.

Not all kids are that smart and lucky, and the recent trends in both intelligence and virtue seems to point rather downward.

There's always one kid in every pack who doesn't wait for middle age to become Walter White, even if it's just his personal roulette wheel coming up "00".
"There are four types of homicide: felonious, accidental, justifiable, and praiseworthy." -Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
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