02/05/10
Student hackers may be trying to earn an 'A' by breaching security to change grades
Even as cyber attacks become more the territory of organized crime and nation-states, there is still a chance that today's hackers can still just be a bunch of kids with some technical know-how and a motive. That may be the case in the Montgomery County Public Schools, where they officials are investigating a computer security breach that looks to have been initiated by students trying to hack the system to boost their grades, according to the Washington Post. “We are investigating an allegation that some students compromised our grading system and may have changed some grades,” said Dana Tofig, a spokesman for the school system, according to the Post. “We're in the process of interviewing students.” The extent of the hacking is unknown, but it appears that students at Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Maryland used a program to steal passwords from at least one teacher, according to school sources familiar with the situation who spoke to the Post on the condition of anonymity. The school system has asked the teachers to change their passwords and to do so more often, according to Post sources. Winston Churchill High school has more then 2,100 students and boast a 98.4-pecent graduation rate, according to its website.
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