hey i played a little prank in the school network and i heard they can track me im just wondering how this works and the details of it :D

they can track your user name, social security number, rfid devices.

they probably mean your computer use or they may be bluffing you.

ha ha, you wanna learn how to cover your tracks.

There was a time when these pranks were fun, everyone had a laugh, you fixed it and everyone went about their business. Today, it is no longer worth it. Officials are usually scared of the technology, it changes far too fast for them to understand it, and they immediately assume the worst. Therefore they refer it to higher authorities, local or federal depending on their paranoia level. I'm not sure if they can track you, but my recommedation is that you not do that again as the cost can be too high. And at this point you can no longer claim you didn't know what the consequences might be (as I have just told you).

-AntonK

i didnt break into a cia server i renamed a couple of files in a directory to swear words and instead of saying "ha ha, you wanna learn how to cover your tracks" u could be helpful and give a tad more information and i havent got social security

Firstly, without more information its impossible to tell you how to 'cover your tracks'. Secondly you misunderstand me. I was not stating what you did was wrong or bad or even not funny. In fact it probably was quite humerous. I was only stating that for some reason in today's society people do not take jokes like that well, instead they immediately think the worst, and you'll end up paying the price. More of a friendly warning really. We did these sorts of things in school, but that was a lot of years ago, and you were just born too late to have fun without consequences.

-AntonK

oh i see, sorry i misunderstood you ,thank u for the advice

the world has got its head up its own arse :D

They can definetely track you.

If you renamed files, that would show up in the time and date stamp. Then they could look at which accounts were logged in at that particular time.

They probably won't care about this, or even notice it for a while, unless those were important files. But just as a warning, school computers are usually heavily monitored. This can include logging which websites you visit, logging system events, etc. They probably wouldn't use a keylogger, but I wouldn't put it past them. The point is, they have the capability of logging so much information about your computer usage, that you can't be too careful.

yeah about that how much memory would you need to store the information

oh and they already know about the files, our maths teacher found that out with hilarious effect :D :D :D

Only a few megabytes of hard drive space, that's sitting on a server somewhere. You would never see it even if you tried. Very little actual memory is required.

i was also wondering to rename the files i didnt actuallly have to do anything like get admin privileges ,anyone could have done it its not like i broke in,so isnt that just like leaving your front door open and expecting no one to come in

You could liken it to that, but a more correct analogy would be someone leaving their door open, you walking in, and painting graffiti on their walls. Even if it was "easy" for you to do it, that doesn't make it right by any means.

yeah i know but lets use the house example i have graffitied it, fact is someone else could have burnt it down.someone could have put porn on the computers which in my eyes is worse than swearing but now they know about it no one can do anything,im just saying it can be justified

The question is, did you have to log in to the network with a student ID, or did you just use a generic account that everyone accesses?

That's hardly a justification. You're implying that if you hadn't graffitied the house, then somebody else would have done something worse. That's known as a false dilemma.

Just becuase somebody could have done worse, doesn't mean that you didn't do anything wrong.

hey i played a little prank in the school network and i heard they can track me im just wondering how this works and the details of it :D

Yea. In my High School I found out how to gain access to the county's main server.. which serves all the schools in my county. Some digging I found out where all my teachers live, their full names, phone number, SSN, etc. I found printers from all over the county and I would print harrassing messages to a school 10 miles from my seat. I would store games. I did lots on that network.

I never got caught.

But I did get caught changing the description of a network drive at our school. I got 3 days of ISS (in-school suspension). All through HS I never had detention, of ISS/OSS. It was 3 weeks until graduation and I got ISS.

I found out I missed a lot. ISS would fun for me. I got all my work done in 2 hours and then did whatever I wanted to do. I soon realized that I should have been home schooled.

The question is, did you have to log in to the network with a student ID, or did you just use a generic account that everyone accesses?
This is the pertinent question. If you logged in with your own username, they can match this with the access times. In which case... you're fucked. Tough shit.

Security on networks usually works in tiers.

If you're on about just accessing a computer without using a network then there are a number of programs that can be used to look for filechanges on the system and keeps a log for the administrator, all this is hidden from the OS since the programs in question are run at boot.

Those that aren't run at boot can be turned off, then it's just a case of log deleting, the problem here of course is that any form of file deletion will be classed as destructive and it's something to be avoided.

If your login system goes through a network however it will allow the system to Log when you log on and which terminal you logged onto. It won't convey the information about what file was changed or what actions you participated in (unless a logging program is running in the background but for the most part this won't be the case because it would cause no end of internet traffic from casual use.)

For the most part if you are going to "Investigate" a computer to any extent you should look upon such a challenge with certain moral obligations, like:
No Destructive activities (Deleting files that should be kept, viruses etc)
No Data theft (Don't use the computer to steal someone elses work, or get their home address etc)
Report findings (If you find a bug, exploit etc. Report it, you'll probably get credit rather than being told off)