Want to feel like the youth is so much smarter than you? Look no further than the story of a young girl who figured out a way to get out of having to attend virtual school through Zoom by exploiting a safety feature hack and leaving none the wiser — not her mom, teachers, or school administration — for literally weeks.
The story, reported by her uncle, of the elaborate Zoom heist that got her out of school for almost a week to Twitter was first one the little kid referred to as a “technical glitch.” But what it really was that the genius 8-year-old pulled off avoiding her online school for weeks before she was caught by exploiting a few small things on Zoom that stumped basically everyone in her life. It’s hilarious, mischievous, and she got away with it for a while.
Mike Piccolo, the girl’s uncle, is the chief technology officer of the web development company FullStack Labs. He shared a Twitter thread outlining the details of how his young niece was able to get out of attending virtual school. She used a safety feature on Zoom to her advantage, disguised as a software error, and got out of attending school meetings for weeks.
Seriously, genius.
“Day 1: (Zero Day) My sister has three kids, all are currently in Zoom classes. Mysteriously one day, my niece’s zoom stopped working,” Mike tweeted. “She went and told my sister who tried for over an hour to get her logged back in but could not. She figured it was a weird glitch.”
For days, her mother tried to fix the error, according to Mike. While trying to log in, Zoom kept saying that they had the “incorrect password.” The mom called the teacher who tried to get it to work for an hour. No luck. The mom took the computer to a friend’s house to see if it would work there, because maybe it was the Wi-Fi or IP address. Nope, still didn’t work.
Mom then called Zoom tech report. But, those experts couldn’t figure it out either.
The schools sends their computer teacher to their house, they couldn’t figure it out either. Everyone kept getting the “incorrect password” error.
