Nathaniel
This is an update on this story originally on this site a few years ago. I cannot believe this was nearly 8 years ago now. Some details are a bit hazy. But my Computer Science class wasn't the best behaved. You can blame that on the 100% sausage fest it was. Lots of 15-16 year old boy shenanigans took place during the class. A good one was enabling Windows' high contrast theme using the keyboard shortcut ALT+LSHIFT+PRNTSCRN Due to the restrictions our user accounts had, typing the shortcut again did not disable the theme. I do think what I did takes the cake.
There were some earlier incidents that resulted in nothing, such as when I explained to my friends if you logged on to a machine that was supposed to be used only by teachers, such as the ones connected to the interactive whiteboards at the front of the classrooms, most of the restrictions they put on Windows (e.g. changing personalisation settings) were disabled I used this to change my taskbar settings to what I liked and change the theme to Windows Classic. A teacher overheard and stormed to her office saying "I heard that! I'm going to email ICS to have your account banned!" (ICS was what they called their IT team). Nothing happened. Another incident involved another teacher seeing me change a friend's theme to Windows Classic using a tool from Winaero, where she accused me of hacking. I can't remember if she believed me, but nothing came of that either.
It was Friday 4 May 2018. GCSE's were about to start the following week and we all were nervous. I had Computer Science class and had finished my work. Yes I was playing games afterwards, who didn't? leaving the classroom when the teacher asked me to come see her at lunchtime, which was an hour away. I asked if I was in trouble, as any 15 year old would do, and she replied "We'll see." Shit.
Throughout the next class, I was wondering to myself what I possibly could be in trouble for. Usually, if we were caught playing games, we were given a warning and told to shut it off. This was the GCSE's, there was no more learning to be done, so if we had finished, we were allowed to do what we pleased. Lunchtime came, and I entered the Computer Science classroom again, and was asked to sit down, log on to Windows, and insert my USB stick into the computer I was sat down at. The head of Business Studies and IT (Don't ask me why they lumped these two together, I don't know. This man was not part of ICS.) entered the room soon after, and if I remember correctly, he was quite suprised to find out I was in trouble. I was one of his best GCSE Business Studies students.
My teacher and head of IT sat down next to me, and one of them asked me to open Windows Explorer and navigate to my USB stick. I don't remember specifics, but they were mad at the "Games" folder containing GTA: San Andreas (of which my brother had already been in trouble for playing on the school computers), Half-Life 2, JFK Reloaded and this little jem I found on GameJolt. She then pointed to my favourites bar, which contained my Downloads folder, a link to C:\, which they had disabled from showing on the My Computer folder, and a link to the root of their data server, which contained mutliple folders I had no viewing access to, but a couple I did.
It was at this point where my teacher accused me of hacking. My teacher had spent the lesson time earlier looking at my desktop using classroom software on her computer, seeing me extract the Half-Life 2 game files to my home directory. I showed them the exact method I used to put the shortcuts onto my favourites bar, and also showed them exactly how I knew the name of their data server, I opened Microsoft Word, went to the open dialog, and it was sitting right there in the breadcrumbs (this was Windows 7). I had also explained to the head of IT (not the head of Faculty, the people responsible for the upkeep of the computer network) in January about the "exploit" and advised them to disallow creation of shortcuts that link to folders they don't want students accessing. (Mainly because the head of IT was using Remote Desktop to connect to a machine I was logged into to fix a problem and noticed both shortcuts).
The head of IT explained to me that this would be sanctioned and my point of entry was indeed fixed, my teacher point blank told me the police would come round my house and seize my computer. I was utterly confused at that remark. Why would they say something like that when I didn't do any "hacking". I left the classroom with them reporting the incident to the senior staff.
Monday came, it was my 16th birthday, and over the weekend I had built a new computer as a birthday gift, which I was sure the police would seize come Monday thanks to what my teacher had said. I was asked to see the deputy head after lunchtime. How busy was he in the morning in order to prolong the absolute dread I was experiencing? Were the police only available in the afternoon? In the afternoon, I let my tutor know I was going to his office. I get to his office, from which you can see the main car park in the hallway his office was in. I look at the cars. No police cars. I knock on the door and he lets me in. He is the only person present in the office. Thank fuck. He tells me what my teacher had reported to him. She said in the email I was "hacking the system in order to put Half-Life 2 on everyone's profiles" that was the quote from the email. I explained to the deputy head that, no, I wasn't doing any hacking. I explained to him my access points, and the only wrong I really did was play games on their computers. He seemed to believe me, and I said nothing more. This man liked to raise his voice, and I didn't feel like getting screamed at on my birthday.
He said my punishment would be 5 lunchtime detentions, on which I only served 2 because of exams, and him, my teacher, the head of IT and I agreed I shouldn't bring my USB stick into school again. Fine, I thought, there was a month of this to go and then I'd be rid of this school forever. One remark he did say was something along the lines of "Education isn't done by *checks email* Thomas the Death Train"
It's been nearly a decade since, and I still think about it, and my teacher did say some time afterward while proclaiming my innocence to another student. "If I had my way, I'd have had you arrested and your [home] computer seized. I've got the evidence" I was so tempted to remark "Well, I've got the common sense" but I didn't. Coincidentally, this was the only time I was able to immediately come up with a comeback that wasn't in the shower. I do have this incident to thank for getting me into cyber security, as I wasn't really sure what to do with my life before that (although I knew it would involve the computer since a very young age).