http://www.madison.com/captimes/news/stories/47911.php By Lee Sensenbrenner April 30, 2003 STOUGHTON - The students who hacked into their high school's computer system to improve dozens of grades weren't techies. They weren't geeks. According to students close to them, they weren't even all that good with computers. "The grades that they were changing were a lot of D's and F's," said a Stoughton High School freshman, who was eating his lunch at Subway Tuesday. "They just got a software program to break in." His older brother is one of the students identified in a potential felony investigation that police expect to continue into next week. For now, his brother and several others have been suspended from school and are awaiting an expulsion hearing, district officials confirmed. "There are a lot of students gone," said Jessica Waters, a junior who was eating with a separate group of friends. "Four students in my fourth-hour class started their suspension Monday." Stoughton Police Chief Pat O'Connor puts the number of students under investigation at 15 to 20, or possibly more. Students gave varying answers, but in most cases said between 30 and 40 of their peers were involved. Stoughton Schools Superintendent Myron Palomba called those numbers "grossly exaggerated" and said he was aware of fewer than 20 students involved. He declined to say exactly how many he had suspended. The boy whose brother is suspended said the group of hackers "did it all on the Internet." "My brother doesn't know anything about computers. They just bought iSpy, and they figured out how to use it." The software he referred to is available to download online for less than $100. Palomba confirmed that they were using a type of program to capture keystrokes and discover passwords. The Stoughton freshman said the group his brother was involved in got caught after they made bold changes in grades, upping some Ds to Bs, or making even more drastic revisions. "They got really dumb," he said. "They got caught because one kid changed an F to an A. The teacher changed it back to an F, and then they changed it back to an A." Both Palomba and O'Connor discounted this anecdote and said the grade changes were more subtle. O'Connor said a teacher noticed several grades that "didn't appear to be in sync." Palomba confirmed that the grade changes were not the type that would save someone's honor roll status, or remove one offending B from the record. He said they mostly involved lower grades that had yet to go on report cards. The suspect's younger brother and three of his friends said the hackers were "pretty popular" students before they got caught. They said that they changed the grades of some athletes who were in danger of becoming academically ineligible to compete. But the group said that they didn't know of anyone paying to have their grades changed. Palomba said he thought "a minimal amount of money changed hands." He said he is treating the matter "very, very seriously" based on the trouble it caused the district. "This is not just some prank. It's a crime," Palomba said. "In many respects this is no different than a group of students breaking into the school and spray-painting the hallways." He said the situation cost thousands of dollars to address. "We've hired outside people to investigate," he said. "We've had to totally reconfigure all the machines, have the teachers change all their passwords, take up all the time of our (information technology) staff," he said. "It's not a prank." Meanwhile, according to the students eating lunch at Subway, which is a popular spot two or three blocks from school, some of the accused - fearing expulsion - have already begun to transfer to other schools. E-mail: lsensenbrenner @ madison.com - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomoat_private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
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