He may not be old enough to enter an R-rated movie, but Domanik Green, an eighth grader at Paul R. Smith Middle School in Holiday, Florida, is certainly old enough to be arrested and charged with a cybercrime felony after he hacked into his teacher’s computer and changed the background image.
Green, who is only 14, hacked into one of his teacher's computers and changed the desktop background image to one that showed two men kissing. Green admitted that it wasn’t all that difficult to figure out the password to his teachers’ computers after watching them enter their last names as the password on several occasions. After learning the protocols, he and friends have used the administrative passwords to video chat and screenshare on school computers.
He was initially just suspended from school for several days, and other students were punished as well, but the school eventually determined that his actions were serious enough to warrant an arrest. School officials have stated that the computer contained standardized testing information, though it is said to have been encrypted and Green didn't access that information. Following his arrest by the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office, he was released from the Land O'Lakes Detention Center on Wednesday of last week. The school has said that, following this incident, it is changing the password protocols for school computers.
“I logged into a teacher's computer who I didn't like and tried putting inappropriate pictures onto his computer to annoy him,” Green told the Tampa Bay Times.
Law enforcement officials are hoping that this incident serves as a warning to students and school administrators alike – for school administrators and IT staff to institute a system for strong password protection; and for teens who may laugh in the face of cybersecurity measures to consider the very serious repercussions of hacking, even if you do think it’s just a harmless prank.
Via Geek.com
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