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HS Students Steal SSNs to Prove They Can
thatshortkid writes "Local news in Chicago is reporting about two Hinsdale Central High School students who breached their school's computer system and retrieved all of their peers' (plus staff's) Social Security Numbers. They claim they have destroyed the information and haven't given it out, but the SSA and FTC have been alerted for good measure. While they claim their motive was to prove that the breach could take place and no malice was involved, they face possible school disciplinary action and criminal charges."
They should be paying them not punishing them.
Unfortunately, people do not learn from others' mistakes. How many times have people broken into school databases only to be arrested! It does prove that you can break into a DB, but so what? Once again it goes to show you "no good deed goes unpunished!"
-Palal
While it may be an obvious way to get the schools attention on the matter, it is, as the article said, a good way to get yourself expelled, etc. Maybe if they took the issue with the IT staff, and showed them one-on-one how it could be done, they would not be in any harms way.
Okay, I understand that what these kids did was stupid, and serious, but is it really necessary to include quotes like this...?
"When we grow up and get our jobs, that's our life right there. They can access anything about us. It just screws us up for the rest of our lives," said Julianne Junus, student.
I guess it kind of sucks that they're gonna get punished for this, but they deserve it. You can't legally break into someone's house just to show you can, they should have told the school (or some news stations) that they were planning to show how easy it would be to get into the system. Then under a controlled environment (with some type of supervisors there) they can show how easy it would be. That way everyone knows the attack is going on and the school knows what was done by the students rather than relying on their word.
Nothing will bring pain to you quite like making someone (or some organization) look foolish. Even if you probably are at least somewhat in the right.
Honestly, what a bunch of fuck ups. If you're trying to do a service by penetration testing, you at the very least notify the sysadmins of the vulnerability you plan to explore.
To go all the way through to stealing *everyone's* information, and then afterwards claim you only did it to help is bad judgment at best. In some states it's criminal.
Copying the openly readable, unencrypted database (say in MySQL) and parsing for XXX-YY-ZZZZ found to be hacking?
Well, for one, it is public knowledge that the SSN X's (in my representation) are in fact, state codes. I have some reason to believe that the Y might be county or some sort of district code, but I cant be soo sure unless I'd gather enough SSN's and location of birth
Yes, the mail center in which you were born is what the state code is attributed to, not the actual locale you live in. Say your parents lived in Phoenix, Arizona but went on a trip to New York City. The baby's SSN would start with 050 to 134, NOT the Arizona 526 prefix.
Well, hope this sparks up some replys (and mod points! yay mod points!)
I had the "fun" of working in our school's server room my freshman year. We had the servers get hacked at least twice.
The first time was a simple brute force attack on a AppleShare server, because the main admin refused to put a limit on the number of password attempts because it was too inconvient to have them simply go up to an admin and reset their password, despite that's more or less exactly what would have to happen if someone forgot their password anyways. I found out that year who had done it, but congratulated the person.
The second time it was because the rather ancient admin password leaked out and they were able to use that to not only get into the teacher's file server but also the SASI server with all the grade data! Why did we use this password? Well be cause it was tradition! I found out only a couple months ago who did this, he didn't
There's so much incompetence at so many High Schools it wouldn't surprise me if it was something as simple as a server that hadn't been patched in ages. Aren't you glad to know that these are the people with all your insensitive data? As it stands at my college they use SS#s for *everything* even though they probably shouldn't.
I'm certainly not suggesting something as draconian as RealID. But it should not be necessary to keep one's SSN any more secret than the account and routing numbers printed on personal checks.
I support punishment of the administrators who did not sufficiently secure that sensitive information. I also support to a lesser degree the punishment of the children who stole the information. However, had that event not taken place, some less scrupulous children might have misused the information that was so easily stolen.
Most databases and file servers have permissions systems in place that can authenticate by host and IP range. Most administrators assign different IP ranges for different purposes - staff should be different from student-accessible. Also, multiple passwords are required in most systems to access sensitive information: computer login, network login, database login. Passwords are also supposed to change often. Why were these precautions not taken, and why did the admin not notice anything suspicious until it was too late?
Never underestimate 15 year olds. Why? First, they have WAY more free time than any of us working folk. Come on. They get home at 3, and have maybe an hour or two of homework to do sometimes, then they stay up until 1-2 AM. Second, there are a lot of them for every administrator at any school. Third, they are hormonally imbalanced and do irrational stuff to prove irrational points. They can exploit all of those points to their advantage at almost no notice. I did, you did, most everyone did.
Someone needs to be made an example to prevent this sort of thing elsewhere. I think the administrator is the best choice, personally.
At the least, they should have made a very real effort to alert the school administration that this was a problem.
In that way, even if they were completely ignored, they'd at least have something to back them up when they make the futile claim that they tried all the normal means to make the school aware of the issue.
Sure, they'd still get in trouble with the school, but at least they'd have some credibility in the public's eye as doing this for a good reason rather than simply because they could.
Keeping SSNs around obviously can't be avoided for the school's employees (for tax and other reasons), but employee databases should be separate from student records, and there are far fewer employees than students anyway.
Basically, SSNs seem to have become the knee-jerk instant universal ID number for American firms and institutions of all sorts, which is a pity. It's best if we (as IT professionals) try to encourage the keepers of old databases to transition away from using them, and to strongly recommend that new databases not use them at all, wherever possible.
there will be a lot of teeth gnashing from slashdotters about this "injustice". usually because the average slashdotter trusts some anarchist high school students more than they probably trust their own police department. they will point out that a security system untested is never sound, and that this move will strengthen security. that better these high school students than someone with truly dark intent break in.
the problem has to do with what the word "trust" means. society at large doesn't trust an intelligent well-intentioned hacker (these students are hackers as in the old school sense if there ever was one, as opposed to the new school "hacker=terrorist" sense). but they DO trust a bumbling idiotic underpaid school administrator.
why?
it's about how the average slashdotter views "trust" and how society at large views "trust". the average slashdotter trusts intelligence, cleverness, technical literacy. but the average joe simply trusts accountability.
the school administrator's job is to keep security, he is trusted by society, paid by society to do this. he is accountable. the school administrator will be reprimanded by this breach, and the breach will be repaired. this is society at work. meanwhile, there is no social contract with the high school student. there is no trust. there is no accountability.
yes, security will be better because of what they did. yes, their intent is perfectly sound. but there is no trust, there is no accountability as far as the average joe sees it.
the lesson therein is for the average slashdotter then:
accountability is more important than cleverness.
to put it another way, the average joe doesn't care how technologically sophisticated the security is on their SSNs. the average joe just cares if THERE IS SOME ACCOUNTABILITY. so the SSNs could be on a text file on webserver, they don't care. the question si: is someone's job on the line for the theft? the average joe understands this concept: someone will suffer if my identity is stolen. there fore, someone out there is motivated to protect me.
meanwhile, these students have no social contract, no accountability. what is their intent? what is their motivation to do good by me? all i have to trust is their word, and i don't know them from adam. therefore, all that they have done for the average joe goes unheeded, unrecognized. the students helped the average joe, but the average joe sees them as criminals.
folks: gnash your teeth all you want, i'm just trying to give you all a heads up about the difference in thinking between the average joe and the average slashdotter. if you don't like what i am saying, don't be mad at me, don't shoot the messenger.
be angry that trust does not mean same thing to you and the average guy on the street.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If I ever found myself in such a situation, the way I would look at it is that my private space was violated by the people who put my personal information where it could be indirectly but publicly accessed, not the people who chose to take advantage of that.
Just a thought.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Right or wrong they might provide expertise to terrorists, or might engage in weapons of mass destruction related activity programs.
if they can't or won't take care of it, there's nothing compelling you to do it for them.
Having my data on their servers seems compelling enough...
I actually went to a college that had email addresses in the form of stu_xxx-xx-xxxx@western.edu. And to make matters worse the school couldn't understand why I refused to use their email.
Restore America: Dr. Ron Paul for President!
The scary thing is until very recently (last semester) this information on every student included home phone numbers *and* Social Security numbers. Don't go to my school if you value your privacy. Our IT department is stuck in 1999.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
The truth is the lazy, idle and incompetent always prefer the cover up to the fix. Whether it is the Roman Catholic church and child abuse, torture at Guantanamo Bay, or security holes, the people in charge will conceal rather than cure. Two examples from my own career:
I was once asked to investigate the apparent failure of an automated component test system. Eventually a review of the hardware and software left the only option as being that the production personnel were deliberately falsifying results and passing rejected batches. Result: three senior managers demanding I be sacked. Fortunately at this point we acquired a new CEO who had several clues. One manager was fired, one left of his own accord and the other was downgraded. But customer confidence had been eroded and the plant eventually had to be shut down. The second example was less exciting: a production director who resisted for years the introduction of statistical process control because it would make clear where systems were failing.
I'm sure many of us have similar examples. It is not in fact important what the motivation of the whistle blower is, we need to change the culture to one in which the response is "Fix it", not "shoot the messenger". With hindsight, we may one day conclude that the tradition of open bug fixing is FOSS is its greatest social legacy.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
How many times have people broken into school databases only to be arrested!
Back when I was in school, we only broke into the school database to change our grades.
paintball
Social Security numbers were originally designed for use with the social security system, and that was *it*. The social security system is set up where the working class have a portion of their pay given to the government's social security program. People who have worked all their life and retire will start collecting money from social security that was paid for by the working class.
The SSN was only intended to be the number you would use to identify yourself to the social security department where they could look up your info and validate that you are ready to recieve your money when you retire.
Now your SSN is your life for the most part. If somsone has your number, they dont even need to know anything else to screw you over. With the number they can do searches and find your name and current residance. With that info they can sign up for credit cards in your name and screw over your credit. They can basicly steal your identity just by knowing that one special number. If someone with bad intentions has your SSN, you are basicly fscked unless you have alot of money to pay lawyers to fix everything.
It's basicly a fairly fscked up system.
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
Since when did a high school become an employer of its students? I want someone to find out why the school had the kids' SSNs in the first place.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."