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Reverse Hacker Awarded $4.3 Million
jcatcw writes "Shawn Carpenter was awarded a $4.3 million award — more than twice the amount he sought and money he thinks he'll never see. Carpenter worked for Sandia National Labs as an intrusion detection analyst. He anayzed. He detected. He reported. He was fired — in Janurary 2005 after sharing his results with the FBI and the U.S. Army. Computerworld asked him what he hoped to achieve in that investigation. Answer: 'In late May of 2004, one of my investigations turned up a large cache of stolen sensitive documents hidden on a server in South Korea. In addition to U.S. military information, there were hundreds of pages of detailed schematics and project information marked 'Lockheed Martin Proprietary Information — Export Controlled' that were associated with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. ... It was a case of putting the interests of the corporation over those of the country.' Ira Winkler, author of Spies Among Us , said the verdict was 'incredibly justified. Frankly, I think people [at Sandia] should go to jail' for ignoring some of the security issues that Carpenter was trying to highlight with his investigation."
I don't think many workers are worried about losing their jobs for bringing up security flaws or waste. There are always anonymous methods to report things like that.
I'm a bit curious to see what they mean by 'reverse hacker'. It is one thing to observe what happens in your sphere, but if you start mucking about, especially in restricted areas/networks it IS asking for trouble.
I suppose though, this deals more with the 'whistleblower' type reports. Thankfully I've never been in any situation where activites like that would be necessary, but to be honest, I'm not sure how things get escalated to that level. I've always had a method available to report even those directly in charge of me. I think the major problem here was the grey-hat nature of his 'reverse hacking' left him with no official avenues to report what he found.
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