Nevada student charged with hacking in to school network, upgrading students' grades for cash

A 19-year-old University of Nevada student in Nevada has been charged with hacking into his school district's computer system and improving his classmates' grades for a fee.

Local police say Tyler Coyner led a group of 13 students (most of whom were minors) who have all been charged with conspiracy, theft and computer intrusion. "Last year, Coyner somehow obtained a password to the Pahrump Valley High School's grade system and, over the course of two semesters, offered to change grades in return for cash payments."

Coyner is reported to have bumped his own grades so high (a 4.54 GPA) that he "was the salutatorian at his graduation, an honor given to the student with the second highest GPA in the school."

Cops raiding his dorm room also found a stolen LCD television set, and gear for printing fake driver's licenses. Not so smart after all.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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urbanhick

Seems like he was just practising for a job with the Gub’mint.
Lobster

Say what you will, this guy just stole himself a career.
enond

I agree with you. but his actions show his stupidity. or maybe a creative?
warreno

Within ten years he’ll be working on Wall Street.

Within twenty he’ll be Utah state Governor.

Within thirty he’ll be stumping at the Iowa caucuses.
Anonymous

How many times have I gone to work for a new company as temp and been given the password, “password1″ … usually taped to the monitor? People are such idiots with how they come up with and store passwords.
TenInchesTaller

Am I the only one who always secretly wishes that people like this succeed?
- Brainspore
  
  Am I the only one who always secretly wishes that people like this succeed?
  
  They do. They’re the ones running your economy.
  - DieFem
    
    Stolen grades?, it sounds like someone that ran your country two periods, not only your economy. :P
DavidN

In the days when these records were on paper, did the same thing ever happen? I think teachers would have noticed if my grades went up a lot suddenly.
Anonymous

He reminds me of Neal Cassady for some reason.
Anonymous

Just don’t let him near the Global Thermonuclear War game.
Anonymous

It wouldn’t surprise me if this type of thing happened more often than we think. One of my college buddies was discovered doing something similar in high school. He managed to make a deal with the school that saved them embarrassment and the real grades and did not involve police or expulsion.
Anonymous

So, it turns out Parker Lewis *can* lose.
KirkUltra

Very cool. I give their antics thumbs up.
voiceinthedistance

Could have been dumber. At least he didn’t change his grade point average to 5.54.
Anonymous

This guy isn’t a hacker, he just found a password.
Anonymous

“somehow obtained a password” = made joke about biology teacher’s sexual impotence, got sent to the principal’s office, and stole the password written down on a sheet of paper when the principal wasn’t looking

he will claim he was just trying to break into that cool new game systme.
grimc

At least he looks remorseful about what he did.
Johnny Fronthole

I guess in a town where prostitution is common place, a young man must find innovative ways to be a pimp.
kmoser

Hacking your school’s computer to change your grades? That’s so 1980s.
Hand of Zeus

A local dot come startup just went wet reading this. He can expect a fat job offer before the issue even settles. So yea, hes grinning hard ‘cuz this is pretty much his resume pic.
- Anonymous
  
  Uh no, there was no hacking here. He obtained a password. He was sly and industrious perhaps, but he didn’t do anything special.
retchdog

the saddest thing is, he became salutatorian and they didn’t even notice.
- imag
  
  Seriously. That’s just mind boggling. Didn’t any of the teachers remember giving him something other than an A or an A+?
  - Johnny Fronthole
    
    You know he was caught, right?
    
    And, Antinous… hahaha. I’m picturing Matthew Broderick in War Games, as kmoser was directly or otherwise alluding to.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      One of our surgical residents where I used to work had all her stuff stolen out of the call room because one of the other residents wrote the door code on the doorpost with a Sharpie. This person is now cutting people open for a living. Don’t get sick.
  - Johnny Fronthole
    
    Sorry, reread the post and realized the time line is a bit goofy.
- Bill
  
  Reminds me of this guy who recently faked his way into Harvard:
  http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2010/05/18/ex_harvard_student_accused_of_living_a_lie/
  - mdh
    
    Huge difference Bill.
    
    This kid spoofed a machine at a high school.
    That guy fooled people at HARVARD.
    - AnthonyC
      
      The fact that it’s a great school doesn’t inherently tell you much about their record keeping security.
      
      I can and will attest that getting the Harvard registrar to change or update anything that *is* supposed to be changed, going through the proper process, is a PITA.
      - mdh
        
        The prestige of the fooled group is irrelevant. The kid outsmarted a machine system to get outside. The guy outsmarted a people system to get inside. Different skills. I guess they both did pretty impressive things, and their common theme is troublingly amorality.
  - Micah
    
    Feh. That Harvard guy ain’t got nothing on James Hogue.
Antinous / Moderator

“Somehow obtained” most likely means that somebody wrote their password on a post-it and stuck it to the monitor.
foxtails

If someone with a 4.54 GPA only made salutatorian, they’d better check on the valedictorian as well…

Redefines “upgrading”.
HDN

In Nevada, at least in some school districts, you get extra points on your GPA for taking honors classes. So the highest GPA is 4.7 IIRC.

And given this was Pahrump, I’m just glad he wasn’t cooking meth.
mccrum

“In the Pahrump Valley Times profile, Coyner says… he wanted to become a hedge fund trader.”

Let’s see:
No actual work done, check.
Charged money for “services rendered”, check.
Lack of remorse, check.
Jail time likely leading to promotion in real world, check.

Who’s willing to bet that some hedge fund doesn’t already have their sights on him?
adamnvillani

That’s good to know that he was a “University of Nevada student in Nevada.” Without that key piece of information I would have assumed he was a University of Nevada student in Kyrgyzstan who was only attending classes via telepresence.
John Bailo

Officials were stunned when they learned the 5′ 2″ Coyner had tampered with his physical records and positioned himself as the basketball team’s captain.

“It was our worst season ever”, said Principal Sturgis, “and now we know why.”
AdrianJMartin

Again the media dumb down hacking…Phone ‘hacking’ is just people guessing an answer phones pin is the default, 1234 or 0000….this guy had a password….
Sounds more like bad security, than hacking….
Bill

umm..there’s a video of his salutatorian speech. happy tuesday.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRVXQ-vGuwA
DieFem

What a moron!. How much money he made?. A question, none of his teachers asked “hey this guy cannot be salutatorian, he sucks”???.
nicluvio

how is this hacking?
- Agies
  
  Social engineering is hacking. Just ask Kevin Mitnick.
Anonymous

TenInchesTaller: When it’s someone cheating widows and orphans, no. But here where it’s someone screwing with the systems at mandatory government indoctrination camps, hell yeah.

This country is a sham. We let wall-street steal and ruin lives with hardly a charge in sight, yet we try to throw the book at some kid who didn’t actually harm anything but some people’s misplaced trust in the system.

I only wish he’d faked credentials as a teacher and further pointed out the absurdity of the system.

Hell, if he’d hacked the vote he’d hardly be a worse leader than the ones we have. He hasn’t sunk so far as to send agent-provocateurs to tar the image of protestors, faked evidence for a war, authorized illegal wiretaps, bombed innocents and covered it up, tortured prisoners, etc.