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Student chaIn college, you can use your time to study. Or then again, you could perhaps rely on the Hand of God.
And when I say “Hand of God,” what I really mean is “keylogger.”
Think of it like the “Nimble Fingers of God.”
“Hand of God” (that makes sense) and “pineapple” (???) are two of the nicknames allegedly used to refer to keyloggers used by a former University of Iowa wrestler and student who was arrested last week on federal computer-hacking charges in a high-tech cheating scheme.
According to the New York Times, Trevor Graves, 22, is accused in an FBI affidavit of working with an unnamed accomplice to secretly plug keyloggers into university computers in classrooms and in labs. The FBI says keyloggers allowed Graves to record whatever his professors typed, including credentials to log into university grading and email systems.
Court documents allege that Graves intercepted exams and test questions in advance and repeatedly changed grades on tests, quizzes and homework assignments. This went on for 21 months – between March 2015 and December 2016. The scheme was discovered when a professor noticed that a number of Graves’ grades had been changed without her authorization. She reported it to campus IT security officials.
The FBI affidavit claims that Graves changed his grades more than 90 times during those 21 months. He also allegedly changed grades on numerous occasions for at least five of his classmates.
Grades were allegedly tweaked in a wide range of classes, including in business, engineering and chemistry.
The FBI said it spoke with one student who told them that Graves shared copies of about a dozen exams before students sat down to take them. According to the FBI, the student said that he/she accepted the stolen exam, given that everybody else was doing it and they didn’t want their grade to suffer in comparison:
He/she knew Graves was providing the copies to other students and did not want the grading curve to negatively impact his/her scores.
When investigators searched Graves’ off-campus apartment in Iowa City in January. They seized keyloggers, cellphones and thumb drives that allegedly contained copies of intercepted exams. The FBI says one of the phones contained a screenshot showing Graves being logged into a professor’s email account. It highlighted an attachment entitled “exam,” according to the FBI affidavit.
Some of the alleged discussions found in text messages on Graves’ phone:
Graves instructing a classmate to go to a microeconomics class to confirm that the teacher logged into her account and “that we acquired the info.”
Graves and an associate referring to a keylogger as a large tropical fruit. “Pineapple hunter is currently laying in wait in a classroom already,” Graves allegedly wrote.
A student identified as A.B. in court documents urged Graves to use the keylogger to steal an upcoming test, saying “I need 100 on final just to get B- at this point.” Graves’ reply: “Or we could use the time to study?”
A student identified as Z.B. asked Graves whether he had told a classmate “about the Hand of God on that test.” Graves’ reply: “No. The less people know the better.”
The university told the FBI that the cheating scheme cost the school $68,000 to investigate the breach and to beef up its IT security. Earlier this year, the university warned students that those involved could face expulsion or suspension. Investigators searched the homes and devices of at least two other students, but they haven’t been charged.
I don’t know how much of an altitude boost Graves gave his grades. Not that it matters. Criminal behavior is criminal behavior, whether you’re popping your A up to an A+ or dragging your Fs up to straight As – as did a former Purdue University student who was sentenced to 90 days in jail plus 100 hours of community service for his part in a keylogger scheme.
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Is it child’s play to plug in a keylogger? Yes. Literally.
Eleven Southern California kids got kicked out of school for grade hacking with the devices back in 2014.
Keyloggers are cheap, they’re easy, and the targets – schools and universities – too often have paltry budgets for equipment, software and skilled administrators.
You would imagine that it would make sense to use multifactor authentication to protect at least the most grade-hacking-targeted areas of a school’s network – the grading and testing parts of the system. But somehow, even a technology powerhouse like Purdue has been preyed on by keylogger-bearing, ethics-bare students.rged by FBI for hacking his grades more than 90 times
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| There are no conversations. |
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| David Edwards |
I ain't learn everything yet at 95. But I got good fingers, that's one thing, I got good fingers. If it weren't for them fingers I wouldn't be going now. |
| John Dalton |
I spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day-to-day discipline that's needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa. |
| Elton Gallegly |
Instead, California is one of only 10 states that provides in-state college and university tuition to illegal immigrants. That's grossly unfair to a legal high school student who moves out of California for a year, then returns to attend college. |
| Roger Daltrey |
I don't think you should ever say, 'This is the last time'. Music isn't like that. You'll be sitting there not wishing to get onto a stage again for maybe two, three, four, five months, or maybe a year, then suddenly you'll wake up and feel like you've got to do it again. It's in the blood, and I never say never. |
| Godfried Danneels |
The word survivor suggests someone who has emerged alive from a plane crash or a natural disaster. But the word can also refer to the loved ones of murder victims, and this was the sense in which it was used at a four-day conference in early June at Boston College. |
| Stephen Covey |
The more people rationalize cheating, the more it becomes a culture of dishonesty. And that can become a vicious, downward cycle. Because suddenly, if everyone else is cheating, you feel a need to cheat, too. |
| Lisa Edelstein |
If you eat a lot of starchy foods, introduce a vegetable once a week, then twice a week, and then three times a week. Slowly fill your diet with new flavors. By the time you're ready to let go of whatever it is you want to let go of, you've got a full menu. |
| James Fenton |
Some of my educated Filipino friends were aspiring poets, but their aspirations were all in the direction of the United States. They had no desire to learn from the bardic tradition that continued in the barrios. Their ideal would have been to write something that would get them to Iowa, where they would study creative writing. |
| M. H. Abrams |
John Updike is always fun. And one of my former students, Tom Pynchon. And Harold Bloom, another former student. |
| Bob Dylan |
You hear a lot about God these days: God, the beneficent; God, the all-great; God, the Almighty; God, the most powerful; God, the giver of life; God, the creator of death. I mean, we're hearing about God all the time, so we better learn how to deal with it. But if we know anything about God, God is arbitrary. |
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https://studentaid.gov/sites/default/files/BD-General-Application-Form.pdf
"It is also important to understand that to be eligible for full or partial federal student loan relief through borrower defense to repayment, you must also have suffered monetary harm. The act of taking a loan or holding student debt is not, by itself, considered to be monetary harm."
So, it's okay if your institution commits misconduct if you cannot prove a causal link between the specific misconduct and monetary harms ...
This post is a comment.
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California High Schooler Changes Grades After Phishing Teachers, Gets 14 Felonies for His Efforts
Police in Concord, California arrested a teenager earlier this week and charged him 14 felony counts after discovering the high schooler launched a phishing campaign directed at teachers in order to steal their passwords and change grades. From a report:
The 16-year-old student, whose name was not released because he's a minor, was arrested Wednesday following an investigation launched by local law enforcement, with assistance from a Contra Costa County task force and the US Secret Service, KTVU reported. Reports of the hack first started to trickle into police two weeks ago, when teachers in...
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The dirtiest corner of the universe is the button that makes the hand sanitizer come out.
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I had a dream that this squirrel was trying to steal my food. I walked over to him and he jumped on me and sunk his teeth into my hand and I couldn't get him off of me. After a while I finally pried the squirrel away and my hand was bleeding and then I had to get rabies shots.
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Damn, accidentally called a black student in my class the name of another black student in my class.
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The guy with the biggest stick makes the rules. Strap up or play the hand you're dealt.
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I'm in my 5th year as a PhD student in computer science and I think this is the first time that I've had a practical application for Floyd-Warshall.
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Alleged Owners of Mugshots.com Have Been Arrested For Extortion
The alleged owners of Mugshots.com have been charged and arrested. These four men Sahar Sarid, Kishore Vidya Bhavnanie, Thomas Keesee, and David Usdan only removed a person's mugshot from the site if this individual paid a "de-publishing" fee, according to the California Attorney General on Wednesday. That's apparently considered extortion. On top of that, they also face charges of money laundering, and identity theft.
If you read a lot of articles about crime, then you're probably already familiar with the site (which is stil...
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"fuck community college, lets get drunk and eat chicken fingers"
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How much do you think Elon Musk drinks? He definitely drinks... but he works like 80-100 hours a week and has like 5 kids. How does he have time to drink? It just makes me sleepy or gives me a headache now, which can definitely ruin a 100 hour work week.
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