"he installed spyware on school hard drives that allowed him to access the computers from remote locations."

Uhh. I think thats actually called a backdoor. How large has the definition of spyware grown nowadays?

about as large as the definition of 'hacker'

See, if you are going to hack your grade, you do this: 1) Change some of your bad grades to better ones 2) LOWER some of your higher grades 3) Do this for others people's grade 4) Don't be greedy and make large changes. No Fs to As

If such a change is detected, the blame wouldn't fall on you. It seems that all those crackers are very short sighted and fail to think their plan though.

This is outrageous. 38 years (or even 1 year) for fiddling with high school grades? Really?

Too true, Back in my day, when we cheated, they just failed you and made you do it again. Repeat a year, or get out of jail when you're 50-something for something you did in HS; choices.

Zero tolerance and all that yap, I guess. Wouldn't want him to grow up and become a tur-rist.

What's interesting is that he would face less time if he hit one of the witnesses with his car "accidentally" and killed them. Justice!

"prosecutors claim that he then used teachers’ passwords to hack into computers and change his test scores"

is it really hacking if you have the password?

A lot of people would consider social engineering part of hacking.

Either way, a hacker doesn't feel the artificial limitation of rules. He had a mission to complete, and he had the passwords to help him complete it, so he took the simple path. Sounds like a hacker to me.

That said, the punishment does not fit the crime.

If only the penalty for lying on your résumé were as harsh.