This is funny, but also not. At a certain university (NOT the one I taught at) the IT department invested a quarter of a million dollars on a new security system, touted as unbreakable. The instructor in an advanced graduate course in the computer science department made that week's assignment to break the security system, thinking it would be humbling for the students to encounter at least one assignment that was not doable. My friend, a computer genuis, broke in to the supposedly secure system in about an hour, and posted his "how to get around security" assignment on the [open] class website, as per the assignment directions. By the end of the evening, every computer geek on campus (and beyond) had a copy, and the new security system was thus rendered useless. My friend was summoned before the Dean, but simply brought a copy of the assignment, complete with directions to load the completed solution on the open class site, and was pretty much off the hook (though he had to listen to a long lecture on 'judgement' and 'taking initiative against security breaches rather than creating them" and so on). What happened to the prof, I was never told. The morals here are: (1) don't be a wisenhimmer and assign criminal acts to your students, even if you think it impossible or that they will get that it's a joke assignment, (2) don't assume your students aren't way smarter than you are and can't do something just because you can't.
