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This is a real story that is happening to me at school right now...

Back in December 2006 during a geography lesson, we borrowed laptops from the library to do group researches on a project. Since the homepage of Internet Explorer was the school website, my group found something called "eMaze" under school applications. We tried to log in using our student number and password, but it did not work. We then tried my art/class teacher's log-in ID and guessed the password for it. Surprisingly, we got into it. It was a total random guess of a password and we were in. We did not know what 'eMaze' was, so after I got home, one of the students in the group who is my friend, told me what eMaze was. It was a database for the class lists, student profiles and even reports! He also told me that my teacher's school e-mail uses the same password. Since that day, I have been going on to check his e-mail due to curiosity and temptation that I cannot with hold. Neither could my friend. I did not go on for two weeks because I was on vacation during the Christmas holidays. When I got back, I found out from the teacher's e-mail that our reports are due to go into eMaze on or before January 15th. I checked eMaze everyday since January 10th for my reports. My friend then told me I can also access everybody else's reports so for fun, I checked the reports for the students in my class. However, I only saw the grade and not the comments. After talking about it with my friend at school, people overheard and asked us about how we knew. We told them and warned them to keep it a secret, but it soon spilled out to everyone in my grade. Two days ago, one girl told the secondary school coordinator about our acts and bam, we were in deep trouble. For some reason, my other friend who has been checking on it as well, was not in trouble at all. Only me and my friend who found out the password were in trouble. We were in extremely deep "soft, brown sticky stuff" as my ICT teacher would say. The secondary school coordinator told my art/class teacher and my parents soon found out. I did not know it could get this serious beforehand and I have apologised a few times to my teacher. I feel better after today when the secondary school coordinator said that I would not get suspended or be on probation. However, my art/class teacher said he will take it further and we will pay for this "big time". My sister told me that he told her that he will leave it to the school to decide my punishment. The last time we used our double art lesson to organise the Christmas Bazaar, he also said we would compensate for the art lesson "big time", but in the end, we did not compensate at all. He also said to my classmates yesterday to tell me to go find him, saying that I had hacked into his account etc and obviously people around him heard that. Today when he spoke to me, he said he has to go through the embarrassment of telling his colleagues... I mean, he shouts it out to other students but is embarrassed of letting his colleagues know that a year 9 student has just hacked into his account?! Weirdo... Anyway, I am now awaiting the punishment the school wishes to give me.

I just thought it would be better if I had said it out...

By the way, his password was his first name. Stupid idea eh? Totally insecure password that anybody could hack into.

Well, that is indeed quite a story. For your teacher's password to be his first name is completely idiotic of him. Especially for important stuff like that.

Personally, from what you posted, I don't see your punishment as being that bad, seeing as how you didn't really cause damage.

In some sort of related story, I had a sort-of friend that hacked my high school's grade database and did major damage...bad stuff happened.

They may not see it this way, but it was that teacher's fault. He should have know better than putting his first name as a password. Geez, It's not that hard to remember a 8-letters long word.

Anyway you should have told him what you found out... or you shouldn't have told it to anybody.

As i see it, your teacher will be asked to make a harder password and you may have a hard time. The bad thing is that you used a teacher account, not what you did or did not. I hope the best for you.

Another common pasword is the personal telephone number. People don't care a lot about passwords. I know some of us uses 15 character long with numbers and symbols... but we are a little paranoid.

Tell us what happen.

Turns out that my friend and I will have to do "Community Services for the School", helping teachers do stuff that needs to be done after school on some days. When this will start they did not tell me, and for how long they did not tell me either.

Sounds good for you then. Community service is hardly bad.

Man, that's one dumb teacher - it could have turned out a lot worse for him if you and your friend hadn't been more or less honest. You might get in trouble for seeing the other students' grades (some schools are strict about not letting that happen, but if you're 9, there shouldn't be a problem).

Just a note (someone correct me if I'm wrong): You didn't 'hack' his account. You guessed his very easy password. Him telling people that you hacked his account is extremely misleading, as hacking requires the use of a program (at least, that's how it was explained to me. Again, someone correct me if I'm wrong) and isn't very legal, so far as I know. Either the teacher doesn't know the difference, or he's trying to make himself look like the helpless victim of a master hacker rather than the idiotic victim of his own carelessness.

I am not nine years-old. Year 9 in my school is the same as form 3, which means I am 13 years old...

Your punishment isn't that bad, the teacher is a very stupid person with choosing passwords and with the things that he tells to people. Good luck with that.

Heh, you got off lucky, to be honest. The police would have been involved if that had happened at my [former] highschool (since I graduated). Heck, it almost happened because I (and about 12 other students, but mine was found) downloaded a game on a school computer, and was accused of sending a virus around to the computers. >_>

But yeah, the teacher wasn't bright making a password that easy, but obviously it wasn't right to go snooping around in it either. If they're giving you school-service, it'll be a breeze, it's not too bad. =P (having worked as a menial worker at my highschool for two summers)

Oh, I see. I misread your post (I thought it said '9 year [old]', not 'year 9'. Sorry about that. Seeing grades might be more of an issue, then...