Domanik Green, a 14-year-old student studying at Florida’s Paul R. Smith Middle School managed to bypass the school’s computer security network using just his computer skills and gained access to the server that contained FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test) data.
FCAT data is basically a standardized evaluation, which requires to be administered every year for students of primary and secondary grades (from third to eleventh grade).
To gain access, the method used by the boy is yet unknown but he was captured on video after he logged in through an administrator account into two of the school’s computers.
It is also unclear whether any data was gathered from the server of were the files damaged in any way but the act did grabbed him a meeting with the police and also two felony charges, one for using the school’s computer system as administrator and two, for illegal access.
The police wrote in the complaint affidavit that the boy utilized the administrator account for logging in to multiple computers on the school’s network without permission. The official document stated:
“One of the computers the defendant accessed, without authorization, was a server containing 2014 FCAT information.”
Moreover, the young hacker utilized his unauthorized privileges for disrupting classroom activities simply by controlling the teacher’s computers and displaying an image of two males kissing, according to 10 News.
According to the police, the boy has admitted that he did perform these acts and also that he was aware that he didn’t have approval to access the systems.
Nowadays, the education systems rely excessively on computer usage both for classroom and school activities. Therefore, one would believe that adequate security measures have been implemented that are enough to resist the kids’ curiosity.
But this latest incident in which a 14-year-old teen was able to access sensitive data has to be taken seriously in order to improve network protection and log-in credentials. Usually, it is the human factor that needs to be blamed for breaching the security instead of a computer security defect.
It is important to keep strong passwords, which means passwords need to be long and comprising of different characters. Also, passwords must never be left lying around or placed at a visible spot like the desk or a post-in note at all.
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