Lincoln Southwest High School: Difference between revisions

Lincoln Southwest High School is a public secondary school located in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA and rests on 74 acres. It is part of the Lincoln Public Schools school district. When the school opened its doors on August of 2002, it had 1,150 students from grades 9-12, and 77 teachers. In just four years, the school has grown rapidly and now holds over 2,000 students. 40% of the students attending do not live in Southwest's zone, but Lincoln Public Schools has an open district. Southwest is the only public high school in Lincoln to operate on a 4X4 block schedule. It also offers a wide range of classes, including Advanced Placement (AP) courses, and is presently the only public high school in Lincoln to offer Japanese as a class. The school's colors are forest green and silver, and its mascot is the Silverhawk.

This is part of a story about something that happened at LSW the first year it opened.

2003 INCIDENT REPORT by Dustin Jeune

�

Growing up in Lincoln Nebraska, my mom interminably preached to me the concept that bad behavior could only result in negative consequences. Of course this would not forestall my growing sense of curiosity; never failing to engender ideas that would get me into the same trouble my mom had been trying so hard to avert. But how could anything other than deviant behavior be expected? I am living in Nebraska, a place where legal behavior was only as much fun as interest in movies would take you. I think the thrill of testing my boundaries on a regular basis created a sort of addiction, one that could never be satisfied without the continued pursuit of mischievous endeavors.

As the years passed by, the availability of technology created a whole new spectrum of possibilities; possibilities I would not only be able to exploit a never ending array of flaws in, but unleash a hidden passion for working with computers.

By the time I was enrolled at Scott Middle School, I was developing low-level security exploits in the latest available Windows platform, Windows 98, with nothing more than limited knowledge in the “C” programming language. As middle school went on, I made my first attempt at bypassing security scripts on the school’s available Macintosh’s. This proved to be a bigger challenge than I had anticipated. I had originally planned to have completely unrestricted access to the school’s computers within a two-day time frame. However, the time it actually took spanned about three weeks; just a bit longer than I had planned. I eventually succeeded in bypassing the school’s computer security and to this day I still believe my fear of getting caught is what actually saved me from being caught. I told nobody of what I was doing and I was incredibly discreet in the manner in which I would perform my operations.�As middle school life was nearing its end, Microsoft released its’ new server based operating system, Windows 2000. Not only was this new operating system more stable, but also far more secure. But because Windows 2000 was not used within middle schools and since I was still operating on Windows 98 at home; my interest in the new operating system platform was less than noticeable.

After the release of Windows 2000, Microsoft released Windows XP. With the exception of minor visual enhancements and improved functionality for the typical home user, Windows 2000 and Windows XP were essentially one in the same. Put simply, Windows XP is Windows 2000 on steroids. Windows XP proved to be such a success with home users not just because of security improvements, rather because of a massively improved architecture. Windows XP did not have the tendency to crash every 5 minutes like Windows 98 did and Windows XP was incredibly capable in its abilities to perform higher intensity media applications and games.

With my completion of my final year at Scott Middle School came the freedoms of summer. With this freedom came three months of lost opportunity to improve upon my knowledge of the Windows 2000/XP architecture. This very well could have had a noticeable impact on the event that would transgress the following year in high school. My summer was spent hanging out with friends, going to movies, and in complete contrast to what I consider a normal summer; staying out of trouble. Nothing really eventful took place that summer.

With summer’s passing, my interest in the computer field had all but vanished. Had my parents not been such strong advocates of my participation in as many computer classes as possible when high school started, the incident that would end my computer exploitation days would probably not have occurred. This is not to place blame on my parents; what would soon take place would ultimately be thought of as a very powerful learning experience. Taking the advice of my parents, I enrolled in three computer classes for the first term of high school. With my eyes glued to a computer screen for roughly 75 percent of the time I would be at school every day, I figured it would be a good way to find out for sure if a life of computers would be best for me.

With two of the three computer classes I would take: computer applications and keyboarding, being basically nothing more than review, I knew that the days ahead would be long and less than amusing. As high school session began and I got my first glimpse of the computers I would be working with; Dells equipped with Windows 2000 Professional, I was quick to realize that the usability of these machines was incredibly limited by the security restrictions that had been set in place by the school’s computer technician. Armed with latest Windows Server platform, I’m sure the school’s technician had a blast devising the seemingly never-ending security script that would load every time a student logged into a school computer.

Midway into the first term of school, I had become friends with several promising and dedicated computer junkies. One of who would play a key role in what would soon take place. Sam Terabon came up to me one day after school informing me that the school technician was taking applications from students who wanted to serve as his assistant.

Now of course, me, being someone who loves having control, jumped at the opportunity. I immediately ran for the computer technician's room, eager to apply for what I considered a dream job. I had knocked only once when the door swung open revealing a tall stocky man wearing cargo pants and a white shirt.

"Scott Long", the man said, extending his arm to shake my hand. It almost seemed as though he knew why I was in his presence. Confidently, I shook his hand with a strong grip hoping to impress the one who had control over my near future employment. Five minutes had passed and I had all the information I needed to create a well thought out resume. The following day I submitted what; in all honesty, was a half assed resume. I guess I figured the competition would be non-existent, or that I had the worlds’ best writing.

Needless to say, I didn't get the job. When I asked Long for his reasoning, his reply was a simple and to the point "You aren't experienced enough". Dumbfounded, I left his room with one thing in mind; prove him wrong. Walking down the hall to my next class, I ran into one of my friends, Bryant Selko. We hadn't talked in a while, so naturally he asked what I had been up to. Still ticked about my failure to succeed in landing my dream job, I may have exaggerated when I told Bryant that Scott Long was a dick and needed to shove a banana up his ass.

The conversation ended there and we went about our ways, only to resume the following day at lunch. Bryant asked me what I thought about the strength of Southwest's computer security. Without even answering his question, ideas were screaming through my mind. Totally forgetting that Bryant had asked me a question, I sat there contemplating ideas silently for at least two minutes while Bryant stared at me in a state of confusion. With the jerk of my chair by someone trying to get by, I came back into reality. I responded to Bryant's question, explaining to him that the scripting obviously was lacking in several areas, ones in which could easily be exploited. �With the completion of my explanation to Bryant, Sam sat down at our table, more excited than usual. "I got the job!" he exclaimed. I immediately asked him "So you have administrative access?” As fast as he was able to say “yes” I was had realized that he had about as much access as Mr. Long himself. At this point I wasn't ready to tip Sam off with the idea Bryant gave me. It wasn't even so much that I didn't trust him; I just wanted to minimize the number of people involved in whatever I would ultimately decide to do. Without saying anything else, Sam left the table, leaving Bryant and I to continue pondering.

Before parting ways at the end of lunch, Bryant and I agreed to maintain absolute secrecy about anything we would do. It would be at least another week before I would see Bryant again.

The idea to exploit Southwest's computer system vulnerabilities faded from lacking communications between Bryant and myself, only to resurface near the end of second term when Tyler Hartshorn, who I had met on the Southwest bowling team earlier that term, confronted me asking me what I had planned. Apparently Bryant wasn't big on keeping secrets which could potentially land us all in federal prison. With the idea fresh in my head, I was almost ready to confide in Sam for his knowledge in our school's computer security layout.

� Before I could actually confront Sam with my aberrant idea, ensuring that the idea hadn’t already reached beyond the confines of our inner group (Tyler, Bryant and myself) was an absolute necessity. I called Tyler that night to see what he knew. It turns out Tyler had overheard one of the conversations between Bryant and I. When I asked Tyler if he had told anybody, his reply: “noooooo….” was less than believable; Though not confident with Tyler’s reassurance that the idea was still a secret from other students and staff, I decided that the risk was still minimum and proceeded with the plan. It was now time for me to find Sam.

Nearly a week would pass before I was able to find Sam. We didn’t have any classes together so finding him proved to be a slightly difficult task. Confronting Sam, the first thing I asked was: “If I tell you something, do you swear to god you will not tell ANYONE, including Mr. Long?” I had to be reassured that he would be willing to put his job on the line to assist me in what I was attempting to do.

“Whatever you need man, I’ve got your back, just don’t get me fired” Sam replied. With his reassurance of secrecy, I explained to Sam what I needed from him. Because the only thing I needed from him was information that he had learned as Long’s assistant, Sam was more than willing to help. Not to mention I really don’t think Sam liked Mr. Long anyways. � Unfortunately, Mr. Long wasn’t very talkative; the information that he divulged to Sam allowing him to effectively do his job wasn’t exactly helpful. In order for Sam to be of any help whatsoever, Sam would have to relinquish his password to me and that was all sorts of so not going to happen. Not dissuaded by the minuscule amount of information Sam was able to offer me, I decided that it would be best to go solo from that point on.

In an effort to eliminate the possibility of further leaks, I contacted Bryant, Tyler and Sam trying to convince them that the idea was not plausible due to the extensive restrictions in effect for student accounts on school computers. As far as I could tell the bluff had worked. I had heard nothing else from any of them about the idea in the following days.

In reality, trying to prevent further spread of information proved fruitless, it would be only a week after trying to eliminate further information leaks before I would be called to the office. Some how the school’s administration learned of the plot and was frantically trying to ensure that the risk of a security breach was eliminated.

Upon opening that door of uncertainty that separated the administration from the student body, I was, for the most part, knowingly subjecting myself to a domain; ruled by people with powers allowing the threatening and manipulation of students suspected of wrong doing until a confession was made. As I opened the expensive looking wooden door, the contact between my hand and the cold, silver metal handle sent a chill down my back, almost as though it was a foreshadowing of what was ahead of me. I took no more than two steps past the door and into the office before being confronted by Karen Ward; one of Southwest’s associate principals.

Towering above her, the first thing I noticed was her gray poofy hair and her glasses, which seemed reminiscent of what a typical librarian would wear. Before I could even give her the pink pass, she instructed me to follow her to her office. In obeying her orders, I proceeded to follow the poofy haired woman, knowing that failure to comply could produce a not so good consequence. Before I knew it we reached her office, a room adjacent to several other rooms; presumably the offices of other administrators. “Sit.” Mrs. Ward said to me in a voice that seemed to show impatience. Without hesitation I did as I was told. “What do you know about students attempting to gain unauthorized access to the school servers?” she asked with a sort of confident tone indicating she knew I knew something about it. At this point I knew I had placed blind trust in Bryant, Tyler and Sam. With little thought I figured my best bet would be to plead ignorance, after all, what evidence could she possibly have? “I dunno what you’re talking about.” I told her. Obviously doubting any truth in what I said, but unable to prove otherwise, she wrote me a pass back to the class from which I came.

Logically you would think after having been questioned by the administration I would just drop the notion of exploiting our school’s computers. Well, contradicting logic, my urge to exploit security vulnerabilities was intensified. I spent that entire night researching Windows 2000 architecture. What I found was astonishing. There were a seemingly boundless number of vulnerabilities within the Windows 2000 platform.

Equipped with a seemingly never ending list of vulnerabilities, I spent most of the following days in my computer classes checking which vulnerabilities were protected by policy restrictions.

After only a day, I knew exactly what I would do. Mr. Long did a decent job of protecting Southwest’s computers, with the exception of a few areas, which would actually prove to be the security script’s Achilles heel. The most important flaw was so obvious that I developed a disappointment in Southwest’s inability to higher an intelligent computer technician. It turned out that a student user could load any foreign executable excluding installers.

Simply put, this meant that any student could, with relative ease, “dump” (extract) all the user passwords from the Lincoln Southwest servers. There was only one dilemma and it lie in that running a multi user capable password dumping program required administrative access and administrative access is what I definitely didn’t have.

The first step in achieving administrative privileges would be to determine how user privileges were assigned to users logging into Southwest computers. If privileges were assigned from a script that loaded at start up, then alteration of the script allowing me temporary administrative access would be an almost immeasurable amount easier. This could easily be done with a script that would edit the registry (the registry was not visible but was not protected from alteration through executables/scripting) to disable a script from being loaded at the next startup. Permanently disabling script loading was not possible because of the way the policies were enforced. Ultimately I found out from Sam that the scripts were in fact loaded at startup. � To simplify the process of dumping the passwords from the hash, I have included a list of steps that would have to be completed.

Develop a script that would alter the registry to temporarily disable security policies from being loaded at startup. (This would not change the fact that the server saw me as a student rather than an administrator) - Create CD that will load script(s). Create new administrator account with a name that would not draw attention (possibly completed through phase one). Dump passwords with available program (PWDump2).

Developing the 2 line script took no more than a minute, however, after considering the possibility that staff or nosy students may be able to observe me creating a new account, I decided it best if I included a program that would make a new administrator account. Using Visual Basic to do this, I had the program completed almost as fast as the script. The name of the new account would be 06IsGold (for Ishpoo Goldman (quite random)). From here I just needed to put the script and program onto a CD and code an auto run file for it to enable the script to run without manual execution when read by a computer. Total time it took to complete these tasks: about 20 minutes, not bad given I had no previous experience working with registry editing on Visual Basic. The only thing that bothers me about this process was my decision to develop a script and an executable when I could have just done both in Visual Basic.

With the hasty consummation of phase one; mental bliss accompanied by a receding yearning to have what my student peers could not, created a sort of apathetical affect on my urge to complete the project. When I think back to why this happened, the only explanation I am able to furnish is the effect of incomplete fulfillment that overtakes a person’s state of mind after completing something that they had worked so hard at. Conversely, I hadn’t worked hard at creating that CD, in fact the time it took all together equated to less time than it took me to fully concoct the idea in the first place.

The lackadaisical effect that had halted progress lasted but a few days. I needed nothing more than the appearance of Scott Long before my eyes to reignite the fire which had dwindled to a small flame within me, the same flame that had been enkindled when he denied me an opportunity that I had so much aspired to be a part of. After passing Mr. Long on my typical route from class to class, I was ready to complete the mission that I had devised so far in the past.

Throughout the process, I was constantly on guard for prying eyes; teachers and students alike, any leak from here on would preclude any further progress, in fact, would more likely ensure my subjection to sovereign consequences.

My sense of awareness was, however, not perfect. While doing a search on Google for “Windows 2000 exploits”, one of the school’s library assistants was quietly taking an interest in my reading material and it wasn’t until she gently tapped my shoulder that I became aware of her presence. Taken completely by surprise, but hoping not to give away the idea that I was guilty of any wrong doing, I explained to her that I was doing research for my computer applications class. The librarian gave me an odd look, indicating she knew I was feeding her a load of bullshit and then walked away. I was never called to the office for this though, so apparently she didn’t care too much about it and I truly believe that the lacking communications between teachers and administrators about possible computer security breaches saved me here. Shaken by the close call, but not yet ready to surrender to the notion of school security superiority, I decided it was time to change the way I operated. I needed to create a sort of blanket of secrecy: unfortunately, doing this would require re-enlistment of my friends who I had outcast from the project not to terribly long ago from this point. Sam, Tyler and Bryant would again join the effort to exploit school computer security and the lacking experience of our school’s technology supervisor.

Before I could contact anybody, I received a letter in the mail which had no return address listed. The letter was sent anonymously from someone, who, still today, I do not know the identity of. I can only assume the letter was sent from Sam T. since occupying the envelope was a separate quarter sheet of paper with a seemingly random word followed directly by numbers which I would come to realize was the password to the Administrator account after reading the letter.

I have included a verbatim copy of the letter I received on the following page. �Dear Dustin,

I know what you are trying to do, and while I do not condone your actions, I understand your reasoning for your pursuit. Following this page, I have included a piece of paper with the password to the Lincoln Southwest Administrative account. Use it wisely, if Mr. Long finds any hint of a security breach, the password will be changed or the account will be locked out completely.

No matter what happens, this information must not be shared with anyone, the slightest leak will inevitably end any chance of success in your plan. Good luck.

Sincerely, Anonymous

Account Name: Administrator Account Password: osprey266 � Armed with the administrative password, my work had been cut out for me. It was now a matter of finding a ten-minute window of time in which I would be able to ensure completion.

There was only a week until the term was over and I really didn’t want to wait until after the break since the possibility existed of the administrator password being changed. I contacted Tyler and Bryant shortly after reading the letter and informed them that their assistance was again necessary.

Both Tyler and Bryant were relatively confused about what was going on; after all, they both were under the impression that the plan had been terminated after I stopped communicating with them. It took a while to convince them, but once I informed them that I had the administrative password, they became ecstatic with excitement.

That night on AOL Instant Messenger, we planned out exactly what everybody was supposed to do to make the plan work. First we deduced that the best location to operate would be in the Southwest media center, though, from this, a new problem arose. The lady I had been caught by before would, without a doubt, keep a very close eye on my every action while I used any of the media center computers. I decided that having Tyler and Bryant located at calculated positions behind me would be adequate in preventing the media center staff from observing our actions. Before signing off, we all agreed that we would meet during our lunch period and carry out the plan.

Lincoln Southwest's theatre and music program has won numerous awards already in the school's short life. The Speech and Debate team also has had many of its students reach Nebraska State Finals and the National Forensics Tournament.

The sports teams have also done very well so far. Both the Varsity Football team and the Varsity Volleyball team have reached Nebraska State competitions. In 2005, Lincoln Southwest High School had nine National Merit Scholars, more than any other school in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Southwest has had a very successful theatre program as well. It took second place in state in the 2004-05 school year for the one-act production, "A Piece of My Heart". A list of productions that have been put on follows.

• O Pioneers
• Do Not Go Gentle
• Footloose

• Noises Off
• Fire in the Hole (a cutting of "The Kentucky Cycle")
• The Wizard of Oz

• The Diviners
• A Piece of My Heart
• My Fair Lady

• West Side Story
• The Boys Next Door
• Amadeus

• Black Elk Speaks
• Beauty & The Beast

Southwest is one of the first high schools in the nation to produce a teacher-led, school-approved podcast. The podcast is led by Economics teacher Dennis Hershberger and the content is filled by students. There is a strong possibility that by the 2007-2008 school year, Podcasting could become a class that all students -- freshmen through seniors -- can take. The class would be the first of its kind. The podcast can be found here.

• Jerry Wilks, Principal
• John Hastings, Associate Principal
• Sara E. Landgren, Associate Principal
• Keri Applebee, Associate Principal
• Virginia Geiger, Special Education Coordinator
• Dave Gillespie, Athletic/Activities Director
• Kim Carson, Asst Athletic Director/Attendance Coordinator

• LSW Homepage
• Podcast Page