A middle school student has just been charged with a felony for what he explains was no more than a prank against his teacher. Domanik Green is an eight-grader at Paul R. Smith Middle School. He explains that he only intended to perform “prank” on a teacher he didn’t like. But now he’s being charged with a cybercrime that carries a felony penalty.
The charges came Wednesday after law enforcement authorities claimed he hacked into his school’s secure computer network.
The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office said that the charges against Domanik Green include an offense against a computer system and unauthorized access.
Sheriff Chris Nocco said that Green logged onto the school’s network back on March 31st, without permission. Nocco said on Thursday that Green used an administrative-level password to gain access. Once inside, he changed the background image on a teacher’s personal computer to one showing two men kissing.
That was it.
For that, Green is being slapped with a felony.
Sheriff Nocco said that one of the computers he accessed had “encrypted 2014 FCAT questions” stored on it, but the Sheriff and the school agree that Green never viewed nor tamper with those files.
So why was it even mentioned? To make Green’s prank seem more nefarious than it was.
“Even though some might say this is just a teenage prank, who knows what this teenager might have done,” Nocco justified.
Green said in an interview from his home, that students regularly accessed the administrative account to and even use school computer cameras to see each other. The faculty and administration were simply clueless about computer security.
But none of the student cyber activities were nefarious, and if anything this indicates how lax the school was with securing their computers.
The school slapped Green with a three-day suspension for accessing the system, which turned into 10 days after he was arrested and held in the Land O’Lakes Detention Center. But far from actually “hacking,” Green says that the passwords were simply the teachers’ last names. He learned this just by watching them type the password in.
Again, for that he is being charged with a felony.
“So I logged out of that computer and logged into a different one and I logged into a teacher’s computer who I didn’t like and tried putting inappropriate pictures onto his computer to annoy him,” Green explained.
Green’s mother, Eileen Foster, said that he son did do something wrong, but she does not agree with a felony charge or arrest for it.
Sheriff says that this arrest should come as a “warning” to other students.
“If information comes back to us and we get evidence (that other kids have done it), they’re going to face the same consequences,” Nocco concluded.