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Get Fired. Delete Colleague's Account. Go To Jail.
SierraPete writes "CNet reports that Thomas Millot, a former systems analyst for a major pharmaceutical company, has lost his appeal on a computer intrusion charge. Mr. Millot was convicted of unlawfully entering the system that he used to work on and deleting a colleague's account after his job was outsourced. Mr. Millot's attorneys argued that his actions did not amount to $5K in damage--the threshold for the crime he was convicted of. The court disagreed, saying that IBM had done over $20K in work to undo his handiwork." Update: 01/14 19:55 GMT by J : Typo corrected; turns out the word "not" is important...
So IBM are apparently claiming $20,350 at $50/hour to investigate the incident. That's 50 man days. For fsck's sake, what sort of incompetent morons are they employing? Call it a couple of hours to trawl some log files, a few more to retrieve the missing account from backup, and be generous and round it up to a week -- 5 man days to tie up all the loose ends, write the incident report and get management signoff for everything. But 50 man days? That's just not even vaguely reasonable, and smacks of them just going for the throat out of malice. Yeah, he screwed up, and deserved to be punished, but the punishment should be proportional to the crime, and it clearly isn't here. Quite how they managed to get a judge to swallow that is beyond me. It sounds like the defence lawyers weren't doing their job. I can't think of any other explanation.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
20k for undeleting account?
Pheww...
Now I understood why IBM four times bigger than Microsoft....
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
Isn't it quite obvious that he should go to jail for this?
My quality social news site.com.
What most people will get out of it: people shouldn't break into computer systems and delete stuff
What I get out of it: don't outsource IT to a firm that doesn't lock out former employees
What are you eating? isItVeg?.
If you're going to let someone go who holds high computer or network credentials, please make sure you disable or terminate their access IMMEDIATELY PRIOR to informing them of your decision. Failure to do so makes the outsourcee become an insider threat.
The best security policy - although it seems cruel - is to escort someone out of the building immediately after receiving their resignation, or informing them that they are being terminated - and simultaneously disable their tokens, badges, RFID devices, company credit cards, voicemail accounts.
Instead of sending him to jail for a crime which no one was hurt, have him repay the money AND then you save room in jail for a VIOLENT OFFENDER.
But I guess it makes more sense to let child molesters on the street and keep a dangerous hacker behind bars! What has this country come to.
The summary should read: Mr. Millot's attorneys argued that his actions did not amount to $5K in damage...
It's those itsy-bitsy words that make all the difference.
Kai MacTane: Web developer for hire in San Francisco
This was a crime, hands down. Period. End of story.
If you read the article, there were multiple breakins, on multiple days, over a period of years.
The last likely removed files between backups, resulting in time lost for the employee. It doesn't speak of what was done during previous raids by this crook, but it is quite possible other costs were attributed to previous breakins.
Crimes like this should be punished, and harshly. This crook should receive a couple of years, for something like this. Perhaps more.
Why so harsh, you ask? It's simple. We need to start attributing _real_ penalties to crime on the internet. Sony, for example, should have seen criminal charges levied against the employees, management and all that had anything to do with that back door. Fines should have been in the billions. Yes, billions, as they should have received several thousands in fines per count. Employees must be treated harsely as well, after all, they can not legally claim they are just "following orders".
If you know your employer is doing something illegal, you are BREAKING THE LAW if you do not report such an act! If you work with the employer, helping to break the law, guess what! It's jail time for you!
We need (well, actually.. needed to, past tense) lock down crime on the internet a long time ago. We really have two choices here. We pay for police presence on the internet, judges that understand the crimes being committed.. or we leave the internet open and lawless.. and see horrid restrictions come down as a result.
People won't put up with cracking all over the place. The public will demand security. The public is indeed, starting to. It can come from laws and police enforcement of those laws.. or draconian laws that restrict rights and freedom on the net (DRM).
Which do you choose? DRM all over the place, locked down bioses and operating systems, logging so intense that ISPs keep a year of detailed backlogs, or realistic laws and paid for strong police presence on the net?
Police all over the world are crying out that they are overburdened with crimes on the net. They are claiming that they don't have the ability to catch crooks, because they need new laws. It's happening right here, in Canada. It's happening, because police _don't_ have the manpower to handle crime on the net, by tracking down crime in the standard fashion. The answer, to them, is increased logging and wiretaps/net taps without warrents. I say, that democracy costs.
To that end, we need to train judges and police to specifically handle computer crime. We need to enact treaties with out countries, and make sure that extradition is a possiblilty. We need to make sure that the police do not have unlimited ability to spy, but that there are judges in place that can issue warrants when the cause is evident. Fund the police, or allow DRM. Again, that is the choice we have.
Anyhow, back to this particular case. A case like this, should be treated as if a physical breakin occurred, sentence wise. This guy KNEW he was breaking the law. He KNEW he was being an asshole. Being employed by someone does not entitle you to smash things in a temper tantrum, years after you've been fired or outsourced.
Bleh.
I've seen lots of similar comments about how what he did was wrong and that he should therefore go to jail.
I don't think anyone claims what he did was not wrong, but jail time isn't the only answer our society has to crime. The question here is not whether what he did was wrong. The question is whether he should go to jail for it.
I say no. We already send too many people to jail. Generally, jail time is bad. It costs our society money, and it makes the situation worse for those spending the time in jail, and it makes our society worse because these people will most likely come out of the jail a worse person than when they went in.
This person here didn't harm anyone. He harmed a company. And he didn't do anything which can't be undone by recovering the data from a backup. Really, what he did was wrong, but it is hardly something worth putting him in jail for.
1. The idiot who logged on to his former employers system and took a little childish revenge.
2. The idiot who didn't disable the account of a security chief who's just been fired.
Remind me never to do business with a company who are that lax with security.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)