Article: Students can use the dark web to cheat their way through school

Link: http://www.businessinsider.com/students-can-use-the-dark-web-to-cheat-their-way-through-school-2016-8

I work in education, K-12 and this article is a constant reminder to me on how students are constantly one step ahead of us.   Sure, I know some of the kids in the schools who have a interested in computers, and some I have actually taken under my wing and worked to provide them proper resources to explore their passion.   Years back I had a student who used a USB key to boot a teacher workstation and hack the SAM to get the local administrator password.   The student didn’t do anything with it, but showed the teacher what he had done.   Kind of a, “hey, look how smart I am” gesture.   So, we put that student into an independent study program for computer networking, and to this day, I still keep in touch with the student who is now in college.  

But this offers a whole new level of hacking.  Not only am I on the lookout for those students who will tinker and hack themselves, but any student can pay for the service, if they want to take advantage of it.   Security is a constant life of catch up.   We can’t fix an issue, until we know it’s an issue and we are constantly chasing after the next generation of kids who know more then us.   And kids sometimes have nothing better to do than sit in class and “tinker”.

This is just plain and simple fact.  At my school, we work very hard to educate students about the rights and wrongs of use.   I can attempt to stop as much unethical behavior as I want, but the reality is that I can’t.   So, education on what is the proper use is paramount!    But at the end of the day, we can make it tough for students to cheat/hack/etc, but anyone intend on real harm can either do it themselves if they have the skill, or hire a professional to get it done!