Many college students are hogging university networks and power consumption because of cryptomining

[Kamina]

 Gotta pay those bills.

[Guest]

pff Freshers, when will they learn

[mr moose]

14 hours ago, huilun02 said:

And can be included in school fees

 

14 hours ago, hey_yo_ said:

Do you think students and parents would be so pleased that tuition will increase because of paying higher electric bills because of miners?

 

You can bet your arse it already is included.  NO business, be it university or otherwise doesn't work out how much it costs to provide a service then charge appropriately.  Every power bill they get goes into the data set that determines the pricing to students.

[Dabombinable]

Its odd to see paid for colleges anywhere having worse network security/monitoring than a lot of the decent-excellent public schools in Queensland. I know for a fact that the highschool which I used to go to successfully blocked crypto currency miners in addition to games (only local network games function properly).

[Godlygamer23]

15 hours ago, RKRiley said:

The pc's in my work are literally from the 90s/early 2000s (post office) so they're not even worth mining on haha. 

 

Oh there's a sticker on the case.. Apparently its running an Intel pentium II.

I'm not even allowed to install anything on my work laptop. Literally. I can't. At all. The security is very high at my workplace.

[mr moose]

3 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

Its odd to see paid for colleges anywhere having worse network security/monitoring than a lot of the decent-excellent public schools in Queensland. I know for a fact that the highschool which I used to go to successfully blocked crypto currency miners in addition to games (only local network games function properly).

It does my head in too, having been in and around both public and private schools for over 7 years now it surprises me that some networks have such crap security. 

[LienusLateTips]

2 minutes ago, mr moose said:

It does my head in too, having been in and around both public and private schools for over 7 years now it surprises me that some networks have such crap security. 

All the schools in my city (at least public), the staff wifi network password is the first 5 letters of the school name and the last four digits of the phone number of the school.

 

The staff network is like 150 down so now everyone knows the password to that and is using it.

[TacticlTwinkie]

If I had the spare cash to set up a mining system, I would totally run it at work. There are a ton of places I could stash it and let that thing rip for weeks on end.

[mr moose]

12 minutes ago, JDE said:

All the schools in my city (at least public), the staff wifi network password is the first 5 letters of the school name and the last four digits of the phone number of the school.

 

The staff network is like 150 down so now everyone knows the password to that and is using it.

 

I don't recall exactly how it worked at the last school I was at, but no one had a password for the wifi, not even the teachers, all devices that were connected where setup by the IT admin and the password saved.  

[Danielx64]

52 minutes ago, mr moose said:

 

I don't recall exactly how it worked at the last school I was at, but no one had a password for the wifi, not even the teachers, all devices that were connected where setup by the IT admin and the password saved.  

The TAFE that I went to, everyone had their own wifi username and password and they had to install a cert onto their devices.

[jagdtigger]

36 minutes ago, Danielx64 said:

and they had to install a cert onto their devices

Now that is a bad idea... (Its required so they can snoop around in your https traffic.)

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

 

I don't recall exactly how it worked at the last school I was at, but no one had a password for the wifi, not even the teachers, all devices that were connected where setup by the IT admin and the password saved.  

RADIUS auth using computer AD account.

[Danielx64]

15 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Now that is a bad idea... (Its required so they can snoop around in your https traffic.)

Yeah, unless IT didn't explain it well, I think it all comes from the fact that they would have been using WPA Enterprise and they said "this is how you get and install the cert" and not giving the real details.

[GOTSpectrum]

17 hours ago, hey_yo_ said:

Well I just used the stock cooler with the P4 and it is hot. Same goes for Intel's first dual core CPU which is the Pentium D that also sucked in thermals because it's just two P4's glued together. 

Never said it was cool..... I love the fact Intel tried to say the HT was a dual core but in fact just runs hyper-threading on a Pentium 4... 

[Donut417]

1 in 10 Student loans in the US is in default. This is a very create solution to help pay off some of that debt. 

[captain_to_fire]

13 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

1 in 10 Student loans in the US is in default. This is a very create solution to help pay off some of that debt. 

I don't think $30/week because of BTC mining is enough to cover the interest alone. It will help in other expenses like phone bill and others.

[Donut417]

7 minutes ago, hey_yo_ said:

I don't think $30/week because of BTC mining is enough to cover the interest alone. It will help in other expenses like phone bill and others.

What you gotta remember is Subsidized Government loans dont collect interest while in school, only subsidized loans do. So interest could very well not be that much. Plus interest rates on Government backed loans are below 8% by law. Along with another income, this could very well help a student not have to take loans or not as many loans. 

[Trik'Stari]

Tempting to say "well for the ridiculous amounts of money they charge for tuition, fuck em".

 

At least in the US.

[captain_to_fire]

10 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

What you gotta remember is Subsidized Government loans dont collect interest while in school, only subsidized loans do. So interest could very well not be that much. Plus interest rates on Government backed loans are below 8% by law. Along with another income, this could very well help a student not have to take loans or not as many loans. 

Yeah but the risk of getting a disciplinary action or getting kicked out is higher because of mining inside the campus just like what Stanford did. Lucky for me people taking student loans are very rare as by American cost of living, my tuition would be very cheap at around $8000 for the four years of studying in college. If I decide to go further in my studies, it will be around $2000-2500/semester for medical school or around $1000/semester for a master's degree.

[Donut417]

8 minutes ago, hey_yo_ said:

Yeah but the risk of getting a disciplinary action or getting kicked out is higher because of mining inside the campus just like what Stanford did. Lucky for me people taking student loans are very rare as by American cost of living, my tuition would be very cheap at around $8000 for the four years of studying in college. If I decide to go further in my studies, it will be around $2000-2500/semester for medical school or around $1000/semester for a master's degree.

A Bachelors degree costs about $40k-$50k in the US. Which is why most of us are in debt up to our eye balls. I heard President Trump wanted to change the rules allowing student loans to be wiped out by bankruptcy. I wonder how many people would choose this option. Probably enough to stop the government from loaning money. 

[captain_to_fire]

4 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

A Bachelors degree costs about $40k-$50k in the US. Which is why most of us are in debt up to our eye balls. I heard President Trump wanted to change the rules allowing student loans to be wiped out by bankruptcy. I wonder how many people would choose this option. Probably enough to stop the government from loaning money. 

I can't help but read the comments in this subreddit

I hope things get better in the US especially in tertiary education.

[AshleyAshes]

1 hour ago, hey_yo_ said:

I can't help but read the comments in this subreddit

I hope things get better in the US especially in tertiary education.

I'd argue that in the US as well as other places like Canada, where I am, there's a lot of pressure to go to college.  Not just go but you are now 18, you JUST graduated, GO TO COLLEGE.  Pick something.  Not to mention a lot of the help in  'picking a college' doesn't give in depth career information like 'What are the opportunities in that industry like?' or 'What CITIES are those industries primarily limited to?'.

 

I work in visual effects in Canada so there are basically only THREE cities in the country where you can meaningfully work in this industry, Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver.  Don't want to move from your home town to one of these cities?  Then stop studying this field.  My first two year college was in Ottawa and a lot did not leave the city after college and well, I look up a bunch of them and they work RETAIL and meanwhile I've worked on BLACK PANTHER.

 

Some people will make fun of those who take very 'liberal arts' type educations saying 'there are no jobs in that stupid stuff' but there are, but there are not that many jobs.  So if you are the person who only thought that field was 'kinda cool I guess', surprise, there are going to be obsessive fanatics who did every volunteer hour, mingled at all the right events, gotten the right things to pad out their resumes and basically knew things about that field that you didn't even know existed, and they are going to smoke you.  Frankly, no high school guidance councillor is going to flat out tell you 'Look, you take that program and get somewhere, but only if you are constantly hustling and maybe even stab a few people in the back to get anywhere.  But you, you don't seem to have you're heart in it, so you'll probably end up working at Starbucks and saddled with huge debts'.

 

And then there's the matter of people sticking with education programs that they realise are NOT a fit for them.  We are often raised to 'avoid failure and stick to it' but college COSTS YOU MONEY, so if you are bad at it or don't feel it but you are throwing everything you have to squeak by to the next semester it's just costing you more money each semester.  Students should NOT be afraid to get the fuck out after one semester, after only a LIMITED amount of money has been spent, and re-evaluating your goals.  Sticking with one education program, no matter how badly it's going for you, is like telling yourself you MUST buy a car since you're already at the dealership.  You can just WALK AWAY.

 

Not to mention how many people look down upon skilled trades when skilled trades pay very well and are generally pretty safe careers.  If someone's breaker box fails on a Saturday morning, they will pay WHATEVER it takes to get the lights back on in their house ASAP.

[HarryNyquist]

7 hours ago, Danielx64 said:

The TAFE that I went to, everyone had their own wifi username and password and they had to install a cert onto their devices.

 

7 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Now that is a bad idea... (Its required so they can snoop around in your https traffic.)

 

That's probably the exact reason it's done, otherwise they can't monitor or filter HTTPS traffic. Remember the old trick of getting around SonicWall and WebSense by using HTTPS? Not a problem if IT installs a cert to decrypt the traffic.

[jagdtigger]

7 hours ago, HarryNyquist said:

That's probably the exact reason it's done,

And that is why its a bad idea, no matter what the excuse for doing it is......

[leadeater]

10 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

And that is why its a bad idea, no matter what the excuse for doing it is......

Well if it was your home private internet, but it's not so...

 

Also a cert having to be loaded on doesn't mean it's for SSL proxy, usually that's for SSL/TLS between your device and the wireless controller to secure the authentication process so passwords and other important information isn't transmitted in clear text. Unmanaged devices shouldn't be handled that way though, captive portal authentication should be used and a public cert should be loaded on to it so the web page is secure and trusted by any device like any other secure website on the internet.

 

SSL proxy isn't used that much at all, it's not required anymore since modern firewalls can do a very effective job at web filtering, even HTTPS websites, through other methods like DNS + domain + url filter lists.