The two junior hackers "fessed up pretty quickly" after McDaniels found a classroom computer connected to the server and then simply asked the class who had done it, he said.

It was hardly a major infraction. Kernell and his accomplice didn't get access to anything important on the network.

"They were given after-school detention," McDaniels said. "We didn’t think it was anything major at the time. It was just a low-level server. It didn't have any important stuff on it."

"That ended the problem," he added, saying he didn't have other run-ins with Kernell in class.

McDaniels remembers Kernell as a bright student who was "a little stand-offish with friends."