Slashdot Mirror
Stanford Rejects Business School Hackers
robbarrett writes "The Stanford Report offers the next chapter in a continuing story about business school applicants manipulating URLs on the ApplyYourself system to determine their personal admission status. Harvard immediately rejected the 'hacker' applicants, but Stanford gave 'offenders' the opportunity to defend their actions. However, none of the competitive applicants 'was able to explain his/her actions to our satisfaction,' according to Stanford's dean, so all were rejected. The story mentions the decisions reached by other schools involved in the mess."
They should have been immediately accepted!
But in this case you get what you deserve. Whats the difference of finding out now or later that you didnt get accepted to Stanford?
...and it should be known by now
Yet more of this mindless usage of the word "hacker." Don't people understand that they can use these analytical type people, the ones who actually want to pursue information, to their advantage?
ahh, in some ways i guess this is good...
They hardly ought to be called "hackers". It's like calling arsonists "pyrotechnicians". Sure, the tools may be the same, but the level of expertise is very different.
"Joss noted that while Stanford was dismayed by the actions of the candidates who tried to gain unauthorized access, it "did not rush to judgment given the limited information available to us initially. By carefully reviewing the file of each applicant involved in these incidents, we upheld the business school's values while treating each applicant fairly. As an educational institution, we hope that the applicants involved in this incident might learn from their experience.""
Sounds more like an attempt by the PR departments to cover their collective legal asses after their PHBs jumped the gun and block rejected applicants on the grounds that they committed a crime that technically isn't. IMHO, their position on the matter is weak.
The students didn't steal passwords, spread a virus or trojan. All they did was akin to manually typing in an abiet complicated URL and accessed data on unprotected public servers.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
Quote:
Joss noted that while Stanford was dismayed by the
actions of the candidates who tried to gain
unauthorized access, it "did not rush to judgment
given the limited information available to us
initially. By carefully reviewing the file of each
applicant involved in these incidents, we upheld
the business school's values while treating each
applicant fairly...
That's quite a "holier than thou" sneer at Harvard and MIT.
What I am truly surprised is that none of the schools took actions against ApplyYourSelf as far as I know: rather, the focus has all been on whether the schools took action against the students. I think this plays heavily on the public's fear of "hacking". Just because the applicants peeked using a computer, it suddenly made it such a grave matter.
First, I think ApplyYourSelf should bear some responsibility for not properly securing their web-app in a way that such an action is possible. For many people (and I'd even venture to say that in public opinion), anything that is accessible by typing a URL into a browser window might as well be published. I don't really think the school has the right to penalize the applicants for accessing information that has been made available to them.
Secondly, this whole business has been blown out of proportion: the students were only able to look at their admission status, and that even hinges on the fact that the schools have already published those information to the website. It is not as if the students were actually "hacking" in the sense of escalating their privilege and modifying their admission status. I just don't think this incident is an acurate enough illustration of their moral fibers to warrant such decisions (though I generally have no sympathy for business school applicants).
Thirdly, I think the whole finding out the admission status thing is more akin to being impatient and calling up the admission office with the knowledge that the drunk receptionist would accidentally let the admission status slip out. So why the applicants were treated so harshly and why the ApplyYourself service was not is really troubling me.
W
Engineers also speak PDE, only in a different dialect.
Good grief. I'm guilty of doing this sort of thing all the time.
I'd never really read about what exactly the applicants did before. If the article is right, all they did was poke around the system with URL munged from information they already had. It's not like they exploited buffer overflows to gain control of the system or anything.
Like I said, I do this type of thing all the time. If I'm on a Web site with content I like and I see a series of URLs named something1.htm, something2.htm, something4.htm, etc., you'd better believe I'm going to type something3.htm in and see what happens. On my own dinky Web sites I have, if I don't want people browsing around the system, I take steps to prevent it, such as making sure the server doesn't allow one to list directories, always having an index.htm file in every directory in case I forget, naming files randomly instead of in series, etc.
And, on top of all of that, as the post above states, all these candidates did was find out information that was going to be disclosed to them soon anyway.
So I gotta ask, what the hell is the big deal here? Why is Stanford being such a hard ass about this? If anyone is to blame here for any significant wrongdoing, it has got to be the company that designed software that so easily gives up unauthorized information. I wonder what Stanford did to seek redress against them. (Probably nothing.)
They showed they lack good judgment and a sense of ethics.
I don't want to work with somebody that cuts corners and refuses to play by the rules - what happens when it's a big contract and they decide to "see if we won?" or decide to see if "x is really going to buy Y?"
If I can't trust you to do what is right, I don't want to work with you.
Yes, waiting for B-school admission is a high stress period - but stressful situations is when people's character shows. I can understand HBS and Stanford's stance - they, and their alumni, don't want to be associated with the type of people that will create another Enron.
Overall, they were probably to dumb to get in - from what I saw, the "hack" was a no-brainier - append some code to the end of the URL to hit a page rather than some smart piece of coding; more importantly - didn't they think that there would be alums of schools on the boards that would see th "hack" and let their schools now? And that these alums would be know who to talk to so that the school could investigate and take whatever action is deemed appropriate? If one of the "hackers" had been smart, they'd email the Dean of Admissions and ask - "Someone posted this as a way to check admissions status - is it OK if I use it?"
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Fortunately for us, we have the warm embrace of our parents basement's to return to.
You may have said that tongue in cheek, but look at it seriously.
I, for one, would rather have a family that loved me than all the riches in the world.
the applicants, for the most part, are still 'just kids' and even as a woefully too well aged adult, I can still relate to the idea that taking a peek at 'hidde' information on a web site is not evil
the proble is not the kids. i's this culture of zero tolerance which the otherwise liberal educational community has latched onto with a fervor one would normally expect from religous fanatics.
back when i was attending college the attitudes were different. administration had a 'boys will be boys' attitude and was more concerned with helping us understand why certain activites were not acceptable, rather than striking us down like Zeus on the maountain.
Based on the information I've encountered regarding this mess, there seems to be an extreme level of self righteous bigotry on the part of the 'adults'.
Or perhaps they are just too lazy to do their job of education.
Of cause no institution should be forced to accept students it doesn't want to, but morally speaking, these students have done nothing wrong. There are many immoral things one can do on a computer: sabotaging other people's systems, destroying other people's data among others. But finding out personal information by asking a gullible computer the right question is perfectly understandable. If Stanford want this data safe, they should fix their computers so it protects the data. Computers are remote controlled and pretty much do what their asked to do. One wouldn't leave a priceless Monet strapped to a remote control truck that every kid with a toy car can control, so why do people complain about their loose lipped computer squealing numbers to some kid who knows how to use a URL bar? The sooner people see computers for what they are: devices that are told what to do by more people than they should and forget about the whole trespass on private land metaphors, the sooner people might take some responsibility about dumb machines being given too much information. They probably will end up a lot safer in the long term. It really makes me mad when people blame others for exploiting their own gullibility.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Are you sure? "Not one was accepted" I can see, but "None was accepted" just doesn't sound right.
None may very well be singular (and even that is disputed - see your own link), but it refers to a group - can you therefore not use it in conjunction with a plural verb? I'd put it in the class of words like 'they', which aren't singular or plural themselves but get their number from the concept they embody.
It may be the contraction of 'not one', where singular is definitely used, but none is a fully independent word nowadays and, in my opinion, should be viewed separately from its origins.
On the other hand, the 'was' is part of a quote, a situation where normal grammar rules can become warped.
Jw
Who is morally corrupt in this scenario i ask...
Your modern-day University autocrat has about as much use for morality as a fish has for a bicycle.
This is all about the elites that govern these institutions - they were embarrassed* by the applicants, and now it's payback time.
----------
*Although, for the life of me, I don't see how this** sort of thing would embarrass a normal person, but that just goes to show you how introverted, self-obsessed, narcissistic, and arrogant these monomaniacal little twits really are.
----------
** i.e. typing a URL into a browser with the hope of finding out information ABOUT YOURSELF - information that, in theory, BELONGS TO YOU. Reminds me of hospital administrators who try to ban patients from reading THEIR OWN CHARTS, as if the medical records belonged to the hospital, rather than to THE PATIENTS THEMSELVES.
Just thinking about these kinds of people makes my skin crawl.
Although the prospective students have been penalized by Stanford, there is something that I don't quite understand.
It seems that Stanford made this information (acceptance status) available by entering a (guessable) address.
Until this information was issued formally to the student, Stanford apparently considered this information confidential.
By not utilizing an effective password / security system, Stanford then effectively made this information publicly available.
One could argue that any student would have a right / entitlement to know what information on himself / herself was being made publicly available - especially if the information were supposed to have been confidential.
It is arguable that Stanford effectively violated the privacy of the students, but is prepared to punish the (prospective) students for obtaining the information it made publiclay available.
None may very well be singular (and even that is disputed - see your own link), but it refers to a group - can you therefore not use it in conjunction with a plural verb?
You can if you want--it's an accepted usage as well. I normally wouldn't though. "None was" sounds perfectly fine to me. A lot of things that are correct may not sound right at first--"the data are" for example.
By the way, it's not disputed that "none" is singular. If you read the link carefully, you'll see that both the singular and the plural are accepted usages. My point was that the original poster was trying to nitpick a grammar point that was actually the correct (and, in fact, is generally considered the "more correct") usage.
A better analogy would be if the filing cabinets were left out in the parking lot.
If I spray paint my salary on my front door, I can't complain when my neighbors know how much money I make. Even if I do something like "I make $100^2" instead of $10000.
Was it unethical? I'd have to say yes, but who hasn't hacked URL's if for no other reason than to navigate a poorly designed site.
I found an online vendor who put the price in the URL, I was able to put items in by shopping basket for any price I wanted. I didn't try to buy them like that, and I notified both the vendor and the maker of the web commerce package.
Ironically, the vendor did not seem concerned. They figured if someone tried that they would notice.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I know cheating is something of a sport these days, often performed almost competitively and without second thought to ethics. But when all the highest rated replies to this story are people defending the actions of those students who gained unauthorized access to that information, that's too much.
/. is a reflection of the corrupted morals of western nations (and increasingly elsewhere). For many of you cheating through life is an easy way out and a deliberate choice, but I know I will be a better man if I go through my life honorably.
What these (prospective) students did was wrong. Period. They willingly and knowingly gained unauthorized access to information that was not theirs to access. I generally hate analogies but here goes: if these students found a key to their professor's room and snuck in to check on their exam results, do you think there'd be a furor as to whether they are guilty of cheatin or not?
Now, whether that access gives them an unfair edge like cheating in exams does is irrelevant. Also, whether these students knew they were "hacking" or not is irrelevant. I am positive every single one of them knew of how the status of their application was to be informed to them, and I'm positive that didn't include manipulating the URL or getting instant messages from friends about how to do it. Just the act of getting access to these records is the offense.
The conclusion is that these students deserved the punishment they got. I am also very happy to learn that there are other schools than my alma mater which take honor of their students (and faculty) seriously.
I'm afraid the reaction to this story on
"We have an A-Bomb...what more do you want, mermaids?" --I.I. Rabi, speaking in defense of Robert Oppenheimer
Ask yourself, did the students do the Right Thing (tm)? Whether or not the admin, the company or whoever did a bad job of securing the information is a separate matter, which should be dealt with separately. The fact is that the students did the Wrong Thing ®, and the university don't want people like that. They don't want people who don't seem to have any moral spine, even though they might be good and intelligent students otherwise.
A lot of people here seem to have this idea: "If it isn't encrypted, I'm allowed to read it. If it isn't secured, locked down, and guarded by the army, I'm allowed to break in." Or that it's the admin's fault for "letting me break in".
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The admin may be at fault for not doing his job fully, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that the hacker has hacked. There are two faults involved, not one.
Conclusion: if you hack into a system, you have hacked into a system. Don't make irrelevant excuses.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
If you wish to register your disgust with Stanford's actions here, you might want to hit them where it hurts. Write other alums, perhaps circulate a petition, and threaten to withhold donations (or maybe just earmark donations specifically NOT to be used for the business school) until it changes its stance. Better yet, tell them you'll give them an opportunity to explain their actions, and that you might reconsider based on how satisfactory their explanation is :).
I don't think it sets a precedent to anything. Anyone's free to type in any URL they want, but that doesn't mean you should. Just because it's easy to do wrong doesn't justify it. Lack of moral integrity is lack of moral integrity.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
Funny, some would indicate that if you place your information on a server DESIGNED to publish it through the internet, you have already published that information.
Hence, even if you fail to adequately advertise that the information is available till a later date, the information is published and available to anyone who does enough diligence in the researching of it.
By the same reasoning as Stanford would like you to believe, you cannot "find" a book and start reading it, you must first be given the book by it's publisher. Basically Stanford is indicating that if there's not a URL on thier web page pointing to another web page their server is offering, then the server isn't really offering the unreferenced web page. It's a non-sequiter, and Stanford will likely get sued over it, which is why it is so important to demonize the students and mold public opinion before they have a few hundered lawsuits on thier hand.
And if you don't think it won't go to court, consider this. Stanford ACCEPTED these students, which is part of a contract that indicates should the students decide to pay Stanford and perform well in classes, Stanford will provide them with an education at their facilities. Now Stanford is claiming that viewing certain web pages they publish violates this contract. And instead of a person making this blunder on Stanford's part privately (where it is unlikely to cause big problems) he made the statement in the media.
Stanford is in for some hard education, but I hope that there's not too much Alma Mater out there in the legal field to prevent it from being properly spanked on this one.
You read this article, did you "Do the right thing?" How do you know that it isn't meant to be public knowledge? Read your argument more carefully, if you concede that "I'm allowed to read it.", then you're allowed. Period. End of story. It's not breaking in if your allowed. If someone made the mistaked of allowing it, they can't call you a criminal afterwards for doing what you were allowed to do.
Stanford has absolutely no obligation to accept anybody to their B-school. It is a privilige, not a right. The school has absolutely no reason to accept these applicants who, by their actions, called their own integrity into question when (especially in the case of Stanford) there are hundreds of other extremely qualified applicants.
Poor security doesn't justify the means. From a referenced slashdot article:
This, in my opinion, is really the heart of the issue. I jumped into this discussion a little late, so I haven't had time to read all 150 posts, but what I've read so far I find a little disturbing. There seems to be a common theme that The school had bad security and the hackers were merely (in the words of one comment) asking the right question. I disagree.
I don't think poorly obfuscated information intended to be kept confidential justifies hackers taking or accessing it, much less publicizing for others how to do the same. It seems unethical to me. And, I know I'm risking big time going down the chute of flamebait and troll modding hell for saying so, but I just think the pervasive "justification" of this hacking many of "us" perpetuates the stereotype of "in your face" behavior just because we know the technology and you (rhetorical) don't.
The school blew it only in the sense they didn't have much of a mechanism to prevent access, but would we still be saying it was okay if the school had some huge encryption in place to hide data and someone had hacked that? It really isn't that much different. The fact that the school "hid" the information sets the bar high enough to define the standard as to what the hackers did as inappropriate hacking. Just my $.02
at fault?
If a human admissions officer put the info. on their door, and then hung a sheet of paper over it to 'secure it', would the students be 'hackers' if they lifted the paper up? Now in this case, perhaps the admissions folks really thought the paper was a form of security, it seems like an 'emperor wears no clothes' kind of thing: is the tailor at fault for telling the emperor he was wearing a suit? Is the emperor for not checking it out? In this case we are blaming the people who looked at the emperor and saw him naked!
Anything that is accessble by an unsecured url is publicly published (it's a 'uniform resource LOCATOR', after all). There was a cognitive choice made at some point to call this system 'secure', --or someone didn't read the manual--and that person is the one who published the information at a public URL.
The applicants just found the place it had been publically published before they were told to look there, which hardly seems a 'crime', really it seems more like initiative than anything else.
Let me see if I have this straight....
1) No hacking or cracking was involved - the information was available to anybody who had a login/password by adding freely available information (again, if one has a login/password) to the url.
2) No one is claiming that someone viewed admission status for anyone but themselves (except for the sister but that's another story).
3) No information on the server was changed by the students, simply viewed (ie, admission status was not changed not could it be via this process).
4) Some posters are claiming that the students were told they shouldn't do this, but I have yet to read anything supporting this.
5) In some cases, this act was the sole basis for a denial from the school.
Simply put, the schools will and should get sued by the students who had their admissions taken away. No law was broken, and no attempt at cheating was made.
If you put information on the web, it will be viewed. Period. You can bitch and moan all you want about it, but if the information is not protected, it's your own damn fault. Blaming the students is a sad attempt at diverting the focus from the real issue - security by obscurity does not work.
Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand (bash.org)