It is a high school rite of passage to find a way to improve your academic performance without actually studying harder, at least in Hollywood, where 25-year-old teenagers attempt to kill roommates and stage bicycle accidents in order to pass tests and get As. And it certainly does seem like it takes a certain skill to fake good grades—one Staten Island high schooler recently demonstrated when he allegedly hacked into his school's secure computer system to change his report cards.
According to the Post, 16-year-old New Dorp High School student Eric Walstrom hacked into the school's password-protected, presumably secure computer system. Officials say Walstrom was then able to change the grades on his report cards and transcripts; he allegedly had access to the system between December 14th and February 9th, which is when an IT worker finally noticed someone had been hacking into the system.
Walstrom, a junior, spent a summer taking advanced computer programming classes, where he learned skills that enabled him to USE HIS SMARTPHONE to access the school's system, even though some of us still have difficulty figuring out how to tag people on Instagram.
The Department of Education has not yet responded to request for comment. Walstrom's been charged with forgery, computer trespass, computer tampering, unauthorized use of a computer, and criminal possession of forgery devices. Though it seems unfair to punish someone with such a specific set of skills: "You’d think a kid smart enough to hack his school’s computers would already have good grades," a law enforcement source told the Post. "Maybe the DOE should hire him to expose weaknesses in their security firewalls." Hey, it worked for Leo!
