[whalesalad]

My entire school district was in the same domain/workgroup and so I remember sending a net send to literally every computer on the network, 4 high schools (mine had a population of 4K students), 3 middle schools and a dozen elementary schools. The IT department came running into the computer lab to figure out who had done it. I simply closed the window, switched back to MS Word and played dumb. Good times.

A few months later I got expelled for some Novell netware breakin shenanigans but that whole experience was well worth it. I had been booting into slax and stealing SAM files from shared/library computers and then cracking them at home with lophtcrack to figure out passwords. The top level system admin had a 5 letter dictionary word, “north” as his password. I had keys to the kingdom. I’d shut systems down all the time for fun but never broke a thing. They tried to throw the book at me but fortunately it all fizzled out in the end.

[metadat]

Do you mean suspended? Expulsion is a permaban and means you have to find a new school to attend.

In any case, your tenacious dedication to the cause was admirable.

[whalesalad]

Yes. I was suspended “indefinitely” and after about a week of not hearing from them I just showed back up at school one day. I was escorted to the main office by my teacher who said “uhh bud I don’t think you’re supposed to be here” and then they informed me I was being expelled and sent to a different school. They asked me to write an essay about my experiences during this time, while family came to pick me up, and I told them to get lost.

Ultimately this experience hardened me in a number of ways. In my new school I had a really cool counselor who knew about my wrongdoings but was still supportive. I distinctly remember the discussion about needing a fine art requirement to graduate - but I was red flagged for absolutely no computer classes so couldn’t take computer graphics. Ended up taking ceramics and it was hands down the most fun class I had ever taken in all of school. Ended up meeting my girlfriend there too, losing my virginity, etc. all-in-all it was a blessing in disguise.

The irony is that the school I got kicked out of was a special science and technology magnet school with a ginormous superiority complex. They could have easily turned me into a white hat assistant to help them with the network but they were so insecure (literally and emotionally) that they wanted to make an example of me.

[TheHappyOddish]

I had an almost identical experience (NN based, cracking SAM files with l0pht, expelled). I always thought the same. My old sysadmins at the school were running (without the administrations awareness) IRC leafs and newsgroup servers, and I would have been happy to be part of that.

I ended up ditching school and starting a business, and I'm glad I did. Despite it ending up positive though, the expulsion still rubs me the wrong way decades later.

[swagmoney1606]

I think you'd be surprised.

In my own personal experience, I was immediately expelled for getting access to admin in the AD for our district. Didn't cause any "pranks" or anything.

This was around 2015, I think schools are just much harder on "hacking" incidents these days.