Sri Lankan Student Hacks President's Website to Delay Exam That's one way to get out of a test.

By Don Reisinger

This story originally appeared on PCMag

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There are the usual ways to get out of a test, and then there are the interesting ways to skip a test. One teenager from Sri Lanka allegedly chose the latter.

A 17-year-old Sri Lankan is being detained on charges of hacking the website of President Maithripala Sirisena, according to the BBC. After taking over the site on Thursday and Friday, a group called the Sri Lanka Youth requested that national exams, scheduled for April, be rescheduled so as not to conflict with the Sinhala and Tamil New Year celebrations, the report says.

News of teenagers doing dumb things isn't all that Earth-shattering, but the teen took things up a notch. He, or whoever carried out the attack, added a message on the president's site read that urged him to "take care of the security of Sri Lankan websites" or face the possibility of "a cyber war."

According to the BBC, the unidentified teen was detained until law enforcement could determine the extent to which the threats were real. It's unknown whether he was actually behind the hack or if he worked alone.

President Sirisena's site was first hacked last Thursday with the aforementioned message, but was soon reclaimed after officials realized it was breached. The group again hacked the site on Friday, but didn't display a message. As of this writing, the president's site is back up and running.

Don Reisinger

Contributing Writer

Don Reisinger has been a contributing writer for Fortune since 2015.

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