The problem started last Tuesday, according to the Plainfield Board of Education, which serves a small school district just west of Newark. That's when somebody posted a link to the login page and the administrative username ("admin") and password ("poopnugget") of the district's Genesis Student Information System to 4chan, a popular but anarchic message board best known as the place where David Kernell posted details of his break-in of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's Yahoo e-mail account.

The Web-based Genesis software is used by about 160 New Jersey schools to manage their student records and communicate with students and parents.

It's not clear how much damage was caused, but 4chan members soon started showing how they were able to mess with the school's system. One screenshot shows school lunch prices reset to US$9,000 per meal. Another post claims that "every class is now an elective, and requires only 1 credit to graduate."

In another screenshot, it appears as though the 4chan intruder could have sent a message to students and parents using the school's emergency notification system, designed to send text messages and e-mails to parents in the event of a major disaster.

It's not clear whether the message went out, but if it did, parents in Plainfield would have received a technically accurate but tedious lecture on the difference between the Linux kernel and the GNU/Linux operating system.