A Florida eighth-grader was arrested on cybercrime charges last week after he gained unauthorized access to his teacher’s computer and changed the desktop image to a photo of two men kissing.
The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office has charged Domanik Green, a 14-year-old student at Paul R. Smith Middle School, with an offense against a computer system and unauthorized access, a felony, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
Sheriff Chris Nocco said Thursday that Domanik logged onto the school’s network on March 31 without permission and changed the background image on a teacher’s computer.
Pasco County School District officials said Domanik did not view or tamper with the encrypted 2014 FCAT questions that he had access to while executing the prank.
Domanik told the Tampa Bay Times that that it was easy to gain access to the computer, because the password was his teacher’s last name. He said he discovered it by watching the teacher type it in. He said he and other students had previously been punished for accessing the system inappropriately, the Times reported.
Domanik said he targeted this particular teacher because he didn’t like him and figured the photo of two men kissing would “annoy him.”
The teacher happened to be out that day, but a substitute saw the photo and alerted the school’s administration, the Times reported.
The teen’s mother, Eileen Foster, said she understands her son did something wrong, but doesn’t think he deserves to be arrested and argued that the school’s system should be better secured.
District spokeswoman Linda Cobbe said the school district is in the process of changing the network password,the Times reported.
Domanik received a 10-day school suspension and was released to his mother on Wednesday from Land O’Lakes Detention Center.
The teen will likely be granted pretrial intervention by a judge, sheriff’s Detective Anthony Bossone told the Times.
