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Fermi Lab Compromised by Pirate
tttonyyy writes "The US Department of Energy sounded a full scale alert after machines were compromised at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, according to this BBC article. It turns out that the hacker was a student using the machines to download and store music and movies."
The kid could have picked a less prominent host to save money on a hard drive.
Given that he probably did it for the self-boast rather than space, he should be roasted.
what kind of twit takes the space at a sensitive research facility for MP3s and divx stuff? he should also count himself lucky he wasn't in the US: he'd be halfway to [remote prison facility] within hours.
serves as proof that hackers aren't necessarily smart.
ed
he gets 200 hours for hacking into a national laboratory, but will probably have to pay every last penny he owns to the RIAA and MPAA for having illegal copies of music. hrmm....
The article isn't very specific about the level of access he had gained. I'm guessing the classified information was firewalled off from the network which he broken into for its internet bandwidth. At the very least, I'd expect (false hope?) that the actual particle accelerator controls aren't accessible from any internet-connected computer.
You deserve a head exam. Think here - how many people really believe that the control system for the collider is housed on a machine that was compromised (and is thus exposed to the internet at large)? Admittedly, there's a chance, but no moron would set up a network in this way. And who believes there aren't HARDWARE issues that would prevent an explosion - maybe even safeguards? What a freakin thought, considering this is a US DOE site. And what is this toxic material? The collider is basically a bunch of metal. Not sure what he'd overload, but usually heavy atoms or light atoms are slammed together to see what happens and measure particle/energy emissions. Where's the toxic material and explosive?
Oh, and what villages? They're 45 miles outside Chicago - not the smallest place. Don't worry though. Unless top quarks, CP violation experiments, and Boson experimentation threaten explosion, I think we're ok. Just try researching the subject. "fermilab" I'm feeling lucky gets you there.
Intend to cause harm or not, he did break security. And this wasn't SCO's website, it was a fucking lab! I cannot realy understand the decision taken in this case.
They could at the very least fine him for downloading and/or sharing copyrighted material. Not that I am pro-RIAA (far from it!), it's just that we've seen people fined for less than that in the US. Now that judge just looks dumb.
On the other hand, I always find it stupid when someone hacks into a computer, tells the company there's a security flaw, and then gets busted for being a major terrorist malicious hacker.
Now it's the other way around. What he did was malicious (he did not inform the lab of any security breach after he hacked in), and he downloaded music and movies, which is the uttermost heretic act anyone can commit these days.
Weird.
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
the people in charge of the security at the lab?
Which do you consider more dangerous:
#1 Script Kiddie being hacking server to store films on.
#2 Running a nuclear lab with so little security a script kiddie can break in.
I'm not defending that little hacker guy (erm, what kind of hacker is he anyway exploiting a known weakness to gain bandwidth and storage for MP3 and DivX files... I'd rather make him manually punch one of these files into punch tape instead of those 200 hours civil service which he might find even interesting), but if you run a high-security network infrastructure, then you better be up-to-date with the latest patches and countermeasures. It's not done with applying the latest IE "security update" every Tuesday...
Now calling for a more drastic punishment and considering the current (IMO fair) one as a green light, just shows what's wrong with some people: If hijacking company computers and networks for bandwidth and storage abuse becomes an increasingly common practice in the online world than those "security experts" should probably do their homework and fix the systems instead of calling the cops.
If you leave your car open and someone steals your car hifi, it's entirely your fault. (Go ask your insurance...) Whose car it is shouldn't play a role when sentencing the thief.
Yea, because as we all know there are no colors but black and white.
That said, you're obviously not very intelligent, so you must be a total idiot.
Oh, what's that? I don't know anything about you other than that post? It doesn't matter, that post was stupid, and therefore you deserve to be classified as stupid, right? There's only black or white, so you must either be smart or stupid, and I think the post was pretty dumb, so you must be pretty dumb, correct?
Or, to put a more "on topic" spin on it, obviously, if you swerve to avoid a chipmunk and run over a child on a tricycle coming out of a blind driveway, it's clear that you are a horrendous murderer and therefore must be given the death penalty immediately. After all, there is no excuse for swerving onto the sidewalk whether you meant to or not, so you must be punished appropriately. You should be held just as responsible for your heinous crime as Ted Bundy was for his, becase you are obviously a "proper criminal" just like him.
The idea that you should be sentenced based on some rigid defintion of a crime rather than on your actual impact and your intended impact is so abysmally stupid that I have to call into question the intelligence of anyone who would try to support such a ridiculous idea. If he didn't do any damage and nobody can prove he intended to, he should be sentenced as a minor vandal and a moron. He should in no way, shape, or form be sentenced as if he had stolen sensitive information, damaged any of the equipment, etc. The idea of turning people into "examples" like that serves no purpose other than to deteriorate respect in the legal system. People need to be sentenced accordingly. He was an idiot, and he needs to be sentenced as one. He was not some undercover spy stealing sensitive information, so he shouldn't be sentenced as one. He wasn't even a hacker of any note and it doesn't appear that he was trying to be one, so, again, he shouldn't be sentenced as one.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!