Was an exchange student at a High School in Michigan (I’m German): Hacked the local school network to access the cafeteria system and changed my friend’s photo to Tux (Linux mascot). Would also have been able to change the credit of each student - but mentioned to the sys-admins which then challenged me to brute force their Admin password. I successfully did that and they offered me an internship. I learned a lot over the half year that I worked with them, switched from Windows to Debian (on a Mac! I wasn’t allowed to be paid, but they gifted me an iBook before I left).

While I was there I also setup a cgi (web) proxy on a host in Germany, called it “cproxy” and shared it with friends in the high school. At the end of my year, I think half the school was using it to circumvent the schools accept/reject list for web browsing. I kept it running and two years later my parents received a call from the FBI, that they wanted to have a word with me (I was back in Germany at that point). Supposedly someone used it for fraud on eBay. I remember how I had to tell my teacher in (German) school that I had to keep my cellphone with me because the FBI was about to call :-) Fun times! Really glad that the school in Michigan was so supportive and helped me keep my hacker spirit!