alt Hacker NewsI had discovered the windows net send command as a highschooler too. We mainly just messaged jokes back and forth. One student later decided to try the wildcard to send to everyone, just a simple "Hi". It went out over the entire district hitting multiple schools. I forget why, but no one knew who did it at first. But we had some software installed that let the admin/teacher remotely blank screens or lock the computer, etc. I remember they blanked his screen remotely and once he complained they knew it was him. Didn't get in too much trouble, but I still felt bad for teaching everyone about net send.
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I did the same thing by accident, except mine was "test", I heard murmors around about some strange message on computers in multiple schools in our district, so I fessed up immediately. Our network administrator was just mildly amused about the whole affair and no punishments were carried out.
I got a three day suspension from school for doing this. I sent something mundane like “hello” to entire school. Few minutes later, the IT admin came running down, told me off and took my details.
Made the mistake of telling a couple friends what happened. Said friends thought it would be hilarious to send swear words to the entire school (I was not there).
They played dumb saying they didn’t know what would happen and got off with one day each, I got suspended for three days.
I wouldn’t have minded so much except the next day was an inter-school chess tournament. Thankfully the sympathetic chess coach told me to wait behind the school the next morning and picked me up in the school bus.
At least the district didn't send a runner, shouting "cyber terrorism, we traced it to this room!!!" at the top of their lungs [0].
I just wrote a comment on this thread and I almost thought you were talking about me for a second. lol
Speaking of "feeling bad for teaching someone"... I must have been in 5th grade and this other kid was talking about shorting out a power outlet. I said "What I'd do is unfold a couple of paperclips, stick them into a rubber eraser, then plug that into the outlet and twist it to get the paperclips to touch."
A few days later the principal calls me in. "Did you tell him to do this?" "I didn't tell him to, we were just talking about how to do it." "... well, he's done it before. Don't do anything like this again. Dismissed." I still can't believe that I got out of it; petty tyrants love to flex their power.