6-Month Sentence for NASA Cracker

lunartik noted an AP story running on a 6-month sentence given to Gregory Aaron Herns for cracking into the computer system at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. 'Herns told federal agents he was looking for computer space to store movies he'd downloaded. It took hours for technicians to find the problem, fix it and patch the system's security holes.'"

Comments

With the direction Slashdot has been going lately,

[Chess_the_cat]

I'm surprised this wasn't posted under YRO.

I'd love to see a breakdown of the damages

[Nine Tenths of The W]

NASA are claiming it was $200k. It'd be nice to see how much of that was spent on fixing the security holes he uncovered.

Re:I'd love to see a breakdown of the damages

[Richard_at_work]

He said he broke in to use storage space. Are you going to take him at face value and continue using the system as is, after patching the security hole that let him in? Or are you going to forever view that system as 'dirty', with the costs associated with replacing that system and the data on it? This isnt a simple case of 'change the locks, add more CCTV', as you would with a physical wharehouse, you cant 'distrust' a physical building, there is a lot more he could do with a compromised computer system, including hiding unwanted code.

Re:I'd love to see a breakdown of the damages

[NoOneInParticular]

The more apt analogy would be a world where warehouses are used by burglers both for storing stuff and for putting poison in the stored food. When you find someone storing warez in such a house, are you still going to sell the crackers?

Re:I'd love to see a breakdown of the damages

[_Sprocket_]

A few years ago, I was sitting in on a meeting for Infosec activities at a NASA Center. One of the first presentations was a rather nicely done outline of recent vulnerabilities and exploits admins should be taking action on. A look around the room saw a vast majority of glazed-over gazes. The next presentation was from our local FBI agent who discussed a recent compromise and the actions being taken to apprehend the perpetrator. The room was alive.

There was much appreciation for the progress being made on the case. Apparently, the FBI had their suspect and were busy building an air-tight case for prosecution. There was a general air of victory. But what many failed to realize was the whole exercise was a signal of defeat. The incident represented potential compromise of data. It involved considerable man hours spent on investigation and recovery of the system. It also represented loss of equipment removed from the budget-strapped lab to support forensics activities.

This represents a couple different problems with the common view of information security at NASA.

It shows a lack of understanding of infosec issues. Instead of approaching infosec as a technical problem, the issue often gets far more attention as a legal / law enforcement issue. This is attitude calls for action after the damage has been done.

It shows a inappropriate focus on funding. All IT budgets are stressed. NASA is no different, and perhapses even more thinly spread than others. That means infosec activities tend to get cut in favor of other IT activities. Yet there is no perceived issue in later spending considerable resources to prosecute each infosec incident.

It may be worth stressing that this meeting happened several years ago. And there have been changes in how NASA, and the US Government in general, now perceive information security. So my observations do not represent an all-inclusive view of infosec at NASA (and those observations are my opinion and not policy of my employers). None the less, these observations are still applicable today.

One side observation to anyone considering taking a stab at *.nasa.gov space. Historical statistics show that you'll find suitable targets and manage to compromise a system. But keep in mind, for the US Government that is just the beginning. The FBI views a case as making progress over several years of investigation and finally prosecution. So the compromise of a system that takes minutes, and the abuse of that system over a period of weeks or months may mean that years later you'll find yourself in court.

Wow...

[Flaming_cows]

6 months in prison because he was too cheap to buy a hard drive...

Great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's just download some movies. Oh wait, I've run out of space.

LETS HACK NASA!

Step 1: Download movies.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: HACK NASA!

Re:Great idea

[knipknap]

Who has more expierience solving space problems than the NASA?

Mmm. No.

[Ligur]

"It would be like clearing a sidewalk full of spectators with a fire hose so you can walk through it," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Nyhus.
More like breaking into a bank vault to store the bicycle you just stole.

Re:Mmm. No.

[djdavetrouble]

yeah, yours is better and funnier. He should step down immediately !

****FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE****

Longtime Slashdot.org member Ligur (453963) has been selected to replace Assistant U.S. Attorneey Greg Nyhus. Nyhus, although promising, proved unable to form relevent analogies in meetings with the press. Ligur, although not formally trained in law (a condition known as IANAL) is highly knowledgeable in general subjects, has excellent karma, and is frequently moderated to +5 funny.

This is a good thing

[lorcha]

He was a cracker. He cracked and abused a system. He was convicted, and was given a reasonable and appropriate punishment.

This is how the system is supposed to work.

Re:Makes perfect sense!?!

[Anita Coney]

Could you please post your address, I'd like to show you how clever I could be at breaking into your house.

Policing our own

[TFGeditor]

Tacit approval of this sort of thing (cracking) paints us all with the same unsavory brush. If we do not start policing our own, the "geek/nerd" stigma will deepen. We are professionals, let's act like it.

Re:Hacking Vs Cracking

[MikeyVB]

Oh boy, this one again!

I disagree.

Cracking == Breaking or "cracking" any type of computer security, weather it be software or a server.

Hacking == Programing.

Re:Hacking Vs Cracking

[Flaming_cows]

Actually, that's not it at all. According to 'purists', hacking is a term used to denote someone who programs (e.g. hacking code is programming) whereas cracking is breaking into a system with malicious intent, although the term hacker has been demonized by the media and government (e.g. Kevin Mitnick's story).

This just doesn't make sense

[WidescreenFreak]

I don't buy for a second that he was doing it to find space for movies. It just makes no sense at all.

Let's assume for a moment that all of his movies were DivX-encoded at 650 MB each, just for the sake of argument.

* Hard drives four years ago were still relatively inexpensive. By working at McDonald's part-time for three weeks or so he could have had a new hard drive.

* Even if he had so many movies that he required an additional hard drive, why could these movies not have been burned to CD-R instead? CD writers were available for less than $100 and CD-Rs could have been found for less than 50 cents a piece. He could have had virtually unlimited space as long as he purchased a new spindle now and then. (See afformentioned McDonald's reference.)

* Most importantly, what did he expect to do with those movies? Unless he had a T3 or something equivalent to his house, he would have had to wait hours to both upload for storage and download to view. I've had 1.5 Mb/sec DSL for four years, so I know that it would have been feasible back then, but it still would have been far less effort to burn them to CD-R. And at least then they would have been portable, far more so than a hard drive.

* Assuming 1.5 Mb/sec broadband, it would have taken almost an hour just to download one movie. So, he would have taken an hour to download, an hour to upload (at the VERY least since most broadband companies don't use the same upload/download speed), and another hour to download when he wants to watch it? Was he planning on installing a streaming media server as well?

* Why NASA? Why not find some schlep on his ISP who wasn't running a firewall, had lots of space, and store the data there? A Joe-Clueless-User would have been far less able to determine who was storing data on his system than NASA.

I'm sorry, but I just dont buy the "he was looking for computer space to store movies he'd downloaded" line. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Sounds more to me like he was doing something nefarious and was hiding it or he was just looking for ego points and got nabbed in the process.

Oh cry me a river.

[EvilStein]

I guess he should have thought about that before HACKING A BOX AT *NASA* for pete's sake - and to do what, use it for Divx movies?

This guy was an idiot and got what he deserved. Sorry. Perhaps he should have though first before compromising a piece of United States Government property.

Re:SELinux

[david duncan scott]

No, SELinux is NSA's baby.

Cracking into NASA is one thing. You're up against propellor-heads and zoomies, nice people who think space is neat. Cracking into the NSA is a whole 'nother ballgame. Those folks are professional paranoids, and while they don't kill people, they certainly know people who do.

when you know there is a bug...

[Fortun L'Escrot]

say a vulnerability is posted on the web and it happens to affect your systems. how much does it cost you to get your IT department to locate, fix, and patch the problem?

let's further assume that the party that posted the vulnerability is being purposefully uncooperative. but they agreed to get the vulnerability tested independently by a third party who also happens to be uncooperative. how much does it cost your IT department?

i havent got a clue. but 200k seems like a lot. it would seem that keeping a network secure is very expensive business. and i agree that this is true for physical installations, but digital? i mean seriously. unless of course you are over working your staff who also answer all the phones for tech support in-house making it impossible to manage their time or actually do the work they were hired for in the first place. but 200k for a bug? jesus.

i feel really bad for nasa. no matter what system you use there will be bugs and even when that is not the case a system can be badly configured. if each of these issues costs on average 100k (just a guess) to "locate, fix, and patch" can you imagine how much money is going into IT departments right now? or how much money is going into the IT industry? its like paying the plumber 4 times (just a guess) more than his already expensive rates (apparently there is a shortage of plumbers) and honestly believing that this is the way the world should work.

for crying out loud people. what exactly did this kid do? "shutdown -h now"? and it takes 15minutes to boot up? i mean sorry guys, but maybe you should be protecting your system a little better. i always tell myself. if a teenager can pull a prank like this one there are two things you should do. punish the teenager the way we punish any teenager for a prank like this (which they have sort of done). secondly, get some help securing your systems because a foreign nation will not be looking for space to store movies. they will be out there looking to cripple your systems and not necessarily permanently, 30mins could be critical for a crack squad tectical unit and if it is as easy as just shutting down a server......

ps. to be fair, it could be that restarting the system as part of their "locate, fix, and patch" program takes a lot of time (more than 10 minutes?). there again my friends i would suggest a better system to reduce your costs. this has nothing to do with me believing you shouldnt punish this guy. but quit posting damages that could have been avoided if you spent a little more time designing a better system that met your needs. if google can do it i am sure you can too.
if it takes so long to restart your system even during normal maintenance then build redudancy for your production environment. if this is really just about your personal inconvience then remember you are a plumber and that crap cloggin the pipe is your job.