The Unknown Hacker

By Tiara Sarkar and Saanvi Arora

Photograph by Soumil Kumar from Pexels.

After a long weekend, Lucas joined his first online class of the day. He and his classmates were assigned to a breakout room to finish a math assessment. 

As they were working, a stranger entered their meeting. Confused as to who this stranger was, Lucas asked for their name but received no reply. The person had their mic and camera off, so Lucas couldn’t see anything. Lucas searched the meeting settings to see if he could find the unknown person's details, but failed.

After a few minutes of trying, the unknown person sent a message on their chat. Seeing the message, Lucas’ classmate read it out loud: “I’m a teacher. I will come to different meetings and check on what you’re doing.” Lucas and his classmates were confused, as their teacher, Ms. Elliana, didn’t inform them that an assistant teacher would be with them.

All of a sudden, the unknown person left their meeting. One of Lucas' classmates returned to the main room to ask Ms. Elliana who he was. When he returned, he told everyone that Ms. Elliana hadn’t asked anyone to check on them—she trusted her students and believed they’d do the right thing.

All the students in the breakout room were curious who the unknown person was, what he was doing there, and why he had lied. After their breakout room ended, Lucas and his classmates told Mrs Elliana what had happened. Fearing for her student’s safety, Ms. Elliana asked everyone to come back tomorrow with a plan so they could catch the unknown person and ask who he was. 

The next day, the students joined their meeting and took turns sharing their plans with the class. After each of the students shared, they took a vote. Lucas’ idea was chosen. Lucas said, “We can all catch the unknown person by not making breakout rooms. Then, he can’t join any room and when he comes we can catch him directly!”

A few hours later the unknown person came again. Everyone knew he was there and asked him, at the same time, to tell the truth about who he was. The unknown person replied on the chat: “I won’t” and “I can’t”. 

The classmates were puzzled. Ms. Elliana told the person to stop disturbing their class. The unknown person replied: “Okay, I am sorry for disrupting you, I must have come to the wrong class or my brother must have changed the meeting codes on purpose as a prank, I won't come back.” 

The next day, everyone was happy and safe. The problem was solved and nobody came again. 

Stay safe everyone! Happy zooming!