The Internet has become a valuable and all-encompassing addition to modern education and education systems for the school systems that can afford the luxury of connectivity. Its far-reaching effects are felt everywhere in schools, from having access to improved learning systems and stream-lined record-keeping to aiding in the efficiency of planning more direct bus routes for student transportation, assessing the nutritional value of student lunches in the case of school-provided meals, and gaining access to new curriculum offerings to broaden the scope of education provided by the school.

These diverse, unbelievable examples are given to emphasize that, in some way, every component making up a normal school day can be impacted by the resources and capabilities of the Internet. Knowing how to hack the school Internet can prove very profitable to hackers determined to derail a school from its intended mission and thus, it is important to know how to hack the school Internet to take a proactive stance to protect the integrity of school operations.

Importance of the Internet in Schools

Every transaction, ranging from enabling inter-library loans to providing for the sharing of limited resources between schools to ordering the proper school sports team garb on a budget, can be enabled through the use of some part of the Internet. On the other hand, some school systems simply cannot afford the luxury of connectivity at their locations. In those instances, individual instructors must make the most of their own off-site access to the Internet and its resources. For the schools that can maintain an Internet presence, all possible care must be taken so that no one finds out how to hack the school internet!

Why Hacking the School Internet

Despite the impact that Internet access has had on schools’ educational offerings, there is still a contingency of students who try to thwart the tremendous impact of the Internet and dilute its resources. In assessing what could possibly inhibit the positive impact of the Internet and who would even want to do such a thing, schools must identify the nature of the beast they are dealing with. Is hacking the Internet purely the desire to perpetuate mischief? To make learning impossible? To make life at the school more exciting?

There is an age-old precedent of school students trying to interfere with order and education in the schools. In early classrooms, students enjoyed tormenting their young female school “marms” with a local frog or bug. Pranks escalated to property damage to facilities and slitting tires after school as many schools began to suffer from urban influences. It is little wonder that today’s sophisticated students are now heading toward cyber attacks on computer equipment, and more menacing still, data and education records.

Gaining access to education computers could give hackers access to a set of information contents of exams and assignments–that could be sold for a tidy profit or used to cheat to get a higher grade in a competitive setting. Personal records of students or school personnel could be misappropriated for devious, albeit lucrative purposes, from smearing gossip and ruining reputations to discovering good dirt about someone and then profiting from distributing it or keeping it secret.

Much in the same way that grade books and records were stolen and misused in the pre-Internet past, today’s students and even compromised school officials can gain schools and school systems now attempt to put in place a type of “Internet block” to hopefully block the impact of a hacker on the school’s information systems. How effective that preventative action can be is determined solely by the computer-savvy hackers working away on any given system.

Entire YouTube videos depict the most effective ways to hack a system for any desired effect, including corrupting data, stealing educational or student identity data, and even shutting down a system to prevent the regular operations of the school.

Corrupting Data

An incidence of corrupting data might occur if a hacker had access to a school calendar system, the school’s purchasing records or financial data. Anyone with that access could rearrange dates on the calendar, order five tons of toilet paper, or use school funds to fund a spring break blow-out trip if the corruption was not caught in time.

Stealing Data

Test contents or test question answers could be stolen during a breach of Internet security. This would impact the ability to give a fair and uncompromised test to honest students and could impact the students’ future performance on tests later in their education since relying on falsified grades does not reveal the true potential, or lack thereof, of a student’s true knowledge.

Identity Theft

Theft of student identity information compromises individual students and their relationships with their schools. This type of theft makes the student vulnerable to attack from outside sources who could gain information about a student’s background and use it for extortion and blackmail in the event of a student with a wealthy family.

Shutting Down A System

A truly devious hacker could even take steps to disable an entire school’s operations and prevent it from opening for business for at least a day. Depending upon how much of the school’s vital operations are governed by online clocks, online automatic budget disbursements, online attendance records, and even daily school cafeteria food preparation systems, disabling a school’s online capabilities could literally put the school out of business for a school day, relieving the hacker from having to take a dreaded test or attend a hated class for that day.

Although this is an extreme example of the havoc which could result from the schemes of a determined hacker, it is still possible to throw a school system into a tailspin by gaining access to that school’s information systems.

How to Prevent Hacking the School Internet

Using an Internet blocker can prevent, or at least slow down, the efforts of a hacker to break into a system. Modern Internet investigation, though, has revealed that these are as easily defeated as the old procedure of locking away the grade books and test copies.

The use of a proxy website can grant access to a system and allow a hacker to invade blocked information. This can allow hackers access to the contents of tests, the answers to tests, and even the grades already given on tests. The proxy website allows the hacker to pretend authority to gain access to protected information.

Another method available for those who know how to hack school internet is for the hacker to breach a system by gaining unauthorized access to the system’s Internet passwords and thus gain access to the information stored in a password-protected setting. This can create educational havoc as testing systems can be compromised in this way. Administrative databases are also not immune to being hacked, which can create personnel problems as well once a hacker gains access to the password-protected information in the administrator’s data.

Gaining access to a school’s wi-fi network can also allow a breach in that school’s secured data and operating systems. Ensuring that the wi-fi setup is completely password protected is one step that can be taken to prevent hackers from having a field day. Although Wi-fi systems can be set up to have strict passwords, those can be bypassed by a savvy hacker in order to gain access to the Wi-fi system.

Using a Wi-fi system is not encouraged for schools wishing to maintain Internet and system integrity as anyone passing within a certain number of feet of the school who knows the password can gain access to the network just as a patron at a restaurant offering free Wi-fi as part of its attraction can gain access to that Wi-fi from the restaurant’s drive-through.

The security of a specific Internet system within a school seems to hinge on how diligent that particular school is about maintaining strict uniqueness and security of passwords and other secret information needed to operate the school’s systems and networks. However, as long as there are systems capable of being hacked and there are complicit or desperate students willing to risk the approbation of being caught in the act of tampering with the school Internet, there will be individuals knowing how to hack the school’s Internet.

Between the existence of YouTube films detailing how to hack the school Internet and the availability of tools such as proxy websites able to feign authority and gain access in a quasi-legitimate manner, access by hacking will always be with schools and school systems. Knowing how to hack the school internet is fundamental to staging a proactive attempt at protecting the Internet from hacking wherever possible.