All right it says in the wiki that this all kicked off because a kid was getting disciplined at school for something they did in their bedroom and no details are given about that part. That alone seems really messed up
I do not know you but lets say its your job. And they gave you a laptop. Do you think you should be punished for whatever it is you do in your bedroom?
Chrome book my kid had was sending regular traffic out to some address that belonged to a scholastic vendor. Even when the device was idle. I blocked that site at the router. Thanks pfBlockerng. A few days later he had another chrome book needing our WiFI password. That is when the chrome book got its own VLAN and SSID. The SSID name was compromised. I also tightened the screws on google workspace. They tried one more time with a another chrome book before they gave up on whatever they were after. I have no doubt they wasted some time trying to overcome it. I still treated it like a wiretap. None of my precautions stopped me from putting tape over the mic and camera.
I was a little disappointed they never inquired about it. The fact they didn’t pretty much guarantees what ever they were doing wasn’t required.
I remember spending entire days trying to break the horrible ROM protect on those pieces of garbage when they first started popping up at every school district. Google got wise fast and separated write protect into its own software only flag inside the organizational stuff for any Chromebooks linked to a domain.
I did a nicer one recently which was a samsung chromebook which involved completely disassembling the entire thing and removing the heatsink just to be able to remove a tiny ass piece of conducting electric tape to disable write protect.
Even after that I had to very carefully rewrite the shitty google bootloader with libreboot if I wanted to run literally anything else without making a google approved kpart file which would only run on google’s compiled kernel.
More reason as to why if I ever become a parent, I’m personally setting up and monitoring my kids devices to ensure they aren’t being spies on through their cameras/webcams because a school wants to know what’s going on in their private life.
“hey honey, here’s your first computer. no parental controls, but you’re only allowed to run arch, and im doing a pen test every weekend, with an attack that will disable features I can reach for three days. good luck!”
edit: alternatively: “there are parental controls on the router and I’ll be switching them up regularly. you’re not allowed to look at porn until you’re a better hacker than your parents.”
Not gonna lie… You had me there at the beginning!
I remember when the news came out on the radio. The school reported to parents what their kids have been up to.
Tsk tsk. Rule number one of espionage (and hacking), never show your hand. Anything that tips off the mark and makes them suspicious that they are being watched will ruin everything.
You joke but it’s a real thing. When the allies (chief among them, Alan Turing) cracked Enigma, they had to decide not to act on certain bits of information, lest they reveal that they can crack it.
Same reason the Brits said they’re so good at detecting German planes at night was because they eat lots of carrots. It was actually RADAR.
