Hack Your High School

by DayEight

High School.

Ah!  The years of wonderment and cheap hacking!  Hacking your high school's system can be very beneficial to you, and possibly others.

First, obtain the list of your school's phone numbers, such as the office, athletics department, nurse, guidance, etc.  If you see that the numbers all share the same first six numbers (i.e., 555-5555, 555-5556), then you'll have an easy time.

Get a wardialer (I prefer ToneLoc) and scan the numbers in this mini "exchange" until you get a carrier, or hit a residential or business number.  If your school doesn't have its own "exchange," or you didn't find a carrier, wardial the whole area.  If that still comes up nil, then you're probably out of luck hacking from a safe distance.  You'll have to pull an inside job.  Another alternative is to use a Beige Box, but those things cost money!

If you find a carrier, you have struck virtual gold!  Call it up and attempt to logon.  If it's UNIX, even better!  Schools usually have little or no security, so just cross your fingers and type that magical word: root

If that doesn't work, try others like sysadmin and all the default accounts.  Also try ps####, where # equals the number of your school.  I have talked to some hackers in other towns who say that this is usually the password or an account.  Reminds me of RadioShack screen savers.

If all else fails, set up some sniffers if you can.  Also, though I haven't tested it, the gender snooper in Vol. 12 No. 2, looks like it would work great for those who can't find a carrier or are bad at guessing passwords.  If you do decide to hide in your school until 3 am to do your dirty, be careful.  Some schools have new tracking lights that call the cops.  And sleeping in the boys' room isn't that fun.  Try the girls' room.

If it isn't UNIX, good luck!  Try the ps#### numbers or try "new" or the name of your principal or teachers.  If you still are getting nowhere, bribe a faculty child.  When you have gotten in, you should see an idiot-proof menu.  I believe it's like that for most schools.  If the shell is poor, try to vi your way out of there.  Now you can probably change your grades.

Here's where it gets a tad tricky.  Never change them for more than a few points, and always change someone else's grades too.  This person should be someone you know who is big on computers and lets everyone else know.  That's just a bit of added security, not much but a bit.  There is one exception.  There always is.  If you're a senior and the grades are about to close for fourth quarter, go wild!  Give yourself a bunch of As.  It won't really matter - you probably have already been recruited for a college or the army.  You can also get the home room announcements a day early and also unknown events, like fire alarm testing.

Another fun thing to do is make a memo for a fire alarm, or ask your school's security officer to check some asshole's locker.  Better yet, write a memo to the security officer telling him he has been fired, and a letter to the asshole saying he has been suspended.  These latter options may sound like a lot of fun, but will probably result in better computer security.

More things to do include changing your schedule.  I knew someone who had a messed up schedule that gave him four lunches a day.  The school finally noticed the fluke and corrected it, but the kid never got in trouble.  He was, after all, following his schedule.  I wanted to take Computer Applications, but for a prerequisite I needed to have taken keyboarding for a semester.  No chance in hell I'd do that!  So, a bit of editing, and I had the class.  Also, in my school you need to get so many credits in each class before you can stop taking it.  Guess what?  I don't take gym class anymore!  Filling in credits can be dangerous though, but then again everything in here is!

Here's a very important question: Who can you tell?  Don't tell friends, they will want (and threaten) you to change their grades, and you'll lose them.  Look through the grades for people you don't know receiving Fs.  Approach them and ask for 5-10 dollars to give them a D- instead, so they won't stay back.

While many probably won't believe you, there will always be one or two who do.  Make it well known to them that if you get caught, they're going down too.  Don't you love blackmail?  Even if they say they don't want to do it and then tell on you, just give them like an A+, and say that they paid you to do that.  Make sure they know you can do this.

Some last second details: If you decide to change grades, you shouldn't do anything else, because they will notice something is fishy, check the logs, and see that you have raised your grades.  This means, if you can, erase your presence from the system!

The last thing to try comes from the movie WarGames: find a cute girl, and tell her you'll change her grades if she'll go out with you.  Hey, it could happen!