A student in Coto de Caza, California has done what each and every one of us has only dreamed of doing; he broke into his school’s computers and changed his grades.
Gather ‘round children, and I’ll tell ye of the time that your old buddy Doug failed his fourth grade geography test.
See, I mistakenly labeled Pennsylvania as New York and all hell broke loose as I filled in the remaining states from top to bottom, erasing feverishly as I tried to figure out where I’d gone awry. I still remember crying in our Plymouth Grand Voyager when my mom asked me how I did. Oh how I wish I could have hacked into my school’s computers!
Anyhoo, this kid Omar Khan hacked into his school’s computer system and changed his grades so he could get into a good college. You’d almost feel bad for him, thinking that he might be one of those overachieving, nervous-breakdown types, except that he “allegedly changed Fs and Ds to As on numerous occasions,” according to Computerworld. As if none of his teachers would have noticed. “Omar got into Harvard? Really? Wow, that school must really suck now!”
As if changing a few grades wasn’t enough, Khan also allegedly “altered the permanent transcripts of at least 12 other students at Tesoro High School” and installed a malware program on the computer system to give him access from anywhere. He was finally caught when he asked for his own transcript, at which time “school officials noted a discrepancy.”
Khan faces almost 70 various felony counts, adding up to a maximum of 38 years in jail. I doubt he’ll serve anything close to that unless California’s jails somehow aren’t overcrowded any more. If he does get 38 years, though, maybe he could hack into the penal system’s computers and change the sentence to 38 minutes. He’s got college to attend in the fall! His buddy, Tanvir Singh, is also facing three years “for allegedly conspiring with Khan in the plot to manipulate grades.”