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Student Faces 38 Years In Prison For Hacking Grades
the brown guy writes "An 18-year-old high school student named Omar Kahn is charged with 69 felonies for hacking into a school computer and modifying his grades, among other things. He changed his C, D and F grades to As, and changed 12 other students grades as well. By installing a remote access program on the school's server, Kahn was able to also change his AP scores and distribute test answer keys, and could be looking at a lengthy prison term. Not surprisingly, his parents (who have only recently immigrated to America) have decided not to post the $50,000 bail and Kahn is in jail awaiting trial."
He got caught - unlike me, because I didn't brag about it on a public web site...
Even being a security researcher I might find some of those tasks non-trivial. In highschool I'm pretty sure that kind of action was out of my league. He has certainly learned something.
Here is the list of charges against Khan
34 felony counts of altering public record
11 felony counts of stealing and secreting public records
7 felony counts of illegal computer access and fraud
6 felony counts of burglary
4 felony counts of identity theft
3 felony counts of altering book of records
2 felony counts of receiving stolen property
1 felony count of conspiracy
1 felony count of attempting altering of a public record
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Summary is unnecessarily sensational.
I'm willing to bet the 38 years is if he gets convicted for all the charges, and doesn't get any concurrent sentencing - very unlikely.
Beetle B.
It's amazing how they can turn a talented, although with obvious problems kid, into an outwright criminal. He is 18, for God's sake!!
Sure the kid is an idiot, but does he deserve 38 years? That's insane.
Kick him out of school. Hold him back a year. Put him to work in community service.
People who think he deserves 38 years in prison for being a teenage idiot probably deserve to be in prison themselves.
"You know, a D turns into a B so easily. You just got greedy."
Just wait until they find out what he has done to WOPR.
My humor is probably your flamebait
its not Kahn (repeated several times in post) but Khan
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
Forget the post being sensationalist, what about the legal system? What kind of legal system (or university or whoever is bringing the prosecution) pushes for 40 years for this kind of thing? Clearly not one that expects to do any public good...
-1 not first post
My school server (NetWare) is just as bad. Posted anonymously for obvious reasons.
:)", freaked a lot of people out).
First off, desktops are fairly locked down. But the server itself allows for RDP connections with any username (not just teachers or students).
When you're on any old desktop, you can only access your own network share as a virtual drive. When you're connected to the school server, you get:
-Any documents (class of 2006 or 2007, class of 2008-2011, teachers, ADMINS)
-Network shares with installer sources and keys in text files (e.x. Microsoft Office 2007 Pro Plus with VLK, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9, EasyGrade Pro 3, Houghton Mifflin Test Generator to accompany textbooks, etc.)
-Access to the attendance share (which is outsourced, but the administrative login is kept on said server in house)
-Access to backups from the other schools (junior high, intermediate, elementary)
I was appalled when I found this out. For ethical reasons (and the legal penalties), I decided not to tell anyone or anything. Mainly because in 8th grade, my friend got his computer privileges suspended for the year when we told the computer staff that you could get a command prompt through Internet Explorer, and he almost got a disciplinary record over it.
We tried to help them, and he got in trouble (luckily, no legal issues).(We'd send NET SEND messages to other computers - e.g. "Jane, this is the computer. That's a nice purple sweater you're wearing
Ever since, whenever I've found a computer issue, I've kept my mouth shut, because it's not worth the trouble.
More on topic...this guy has what's coming to him. I think 38 years is too harsh (maybe a couple of years and more punishment in probation), but his malicious intent and clear intent makes me have no sympathy for him.
Who is supporting him? No one is saying he did a good thing, they are just saying 38 years is pretty insane for changing some grades. You can get less time for killing someone. Or maybe even two someones.
I don't know what so unsurprising about that. No parent wants their kid to spend time in freakin' lockup. Further, they can leverage $5,000 of real dollars with a bail bondsman to post $50k, so they just need to sell the kid's computer and scrape together a few thousand more to spare him potentially weeks behind bars.
Heck, banks will loan the money for bail, and I seriously doubt they get the loan-shark like interest the bail bondsman would.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
You're post. suggests that perhaps you USian may have needed to. Change a few grades to survive in skool.
Because its not about 'Us vs Government' in this case, its about 'Us vs Us' - this wasn't a crime against the nation or government, it was a crime that has the potential to reduce other peoples efforts at education.
Is at Gizmodo
The kid is also facing burglary charges because he stole a key to the school and used it to break in several times. The first thing to remember in this case is that it's not just a simple computer crime case, and that 12 other students also had their grades changed.
Further, of course the kid faces 38 years; every one of the small crimes he committed carry a maximum penalty. If you add them all up, you get 38 years. Obviously that doesn't mean that the kid is going to serve anywhere near that amount.
Now, I'm not sitting here saying that this kid should get 38 years. Far from it. But I do think that some jail time is called for. In addition to the burglary charge and the financial hit to fix the problems he caused, he hurt a lot of students. Consider this: For every one of the 13 kids who moved into the top 10% ranking, someone who had earned their spot had to leave. That student may not have been able to get into the college of his or her choice, and - far more importantly - may have missed out on substantial scholarship money. This kid wasn't just harming his high school through the added expense to audit records and security policies, he was hurting totally innocent fellow students.
KHAAANNNN!
[echo]
KHAAANNNN!
Guys like this should be sentenced to public service instead, for example to working for free as an assistant computer teacher for a year, under monitorship from the authorities. That'd turn his obvious competence into something useful, as well as being a net benefit to the society economically.
I'd tend to agree with you, if we were talking about adults trying to take care of their families. Surely, there are at least SOME desperate people out there who feel like govt. has caused much of their financial hardship in recent years - and they have to "step things up a notch" to get back out of the hole they've fallen into.
But we're talking about a high-school student here. His biggest responsibility in life is probably his schooling, and *earning* his grades. I think it's a stretch to claim his cheating via computer hacking was motivated by post 9-11 events. Rather, it's the simple desire to find short-cuts to "get ahead by any means possible".
I agree with the people who say he probably "learned something" with his hacking efforts. I also agree that they're brining a lot of "trumped up" charges against him here. (Conspiracy charges? Uh, right..... His scheme SURELY was really all about undermining our government to overthrow it with his fake A in math!)
Nonetheless, they can't just let this go with a "slap on the wrist" either. Too many students spent a whole year of their lives working to earn those letter grades the right way.
That's 38 years under tax payer care. Honestly I say find a way to put him to work with the talent he has so he's not as much a burden and keep him under heavy watch as he does the work.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
I mean...what the kid did was dumb, granted. But should his ENTIRE life really be completely ruined because he tried to cheat and boost his test scores in fucking high school? Seriously? There are rapists that face less jail time. Murderers who face less jail time. Corrupt politicians who start wars with other nations, unprovoked...that face no jail time. And you're going to hop on the "he's getting what he deserves" bandwagon? Shit, I *DO* support that kid. And yes, he's just a kid. A dumb, arrogant kid that made a stupid mistake. But in the end, no ones been harmed except himself. Expell him from school. Make him repeat the 12th grade. Let him stand on his own two at a community college until he can prove that he's ready for a 4 year program. I just don't think this is worth destroying a life over......
With all due respect but disregarding what good prison would do this kid as "complete ignorance" is ignorance in itself. The kid is 18, even if he saw just a year of jail time, you mix him up with all kinds of career criminals you end up getting out something worse than what you put in. Or you could belive the incarcaration industry that he will come out a reformed character. Tag him, limit his activities, get him to do community service that gives a net gain instead of the cost of sheltering and feeding from the state.
I'm not against prison, I just think there are more effective ways of punishing him.
Ok, so the kid is a greedy one, changing all of his grades to As ;)
But he is also not very socially bright, think about the other 12 kids for whome he changed the grades, someone was bound to talk. Or maybe a parent saw a dramatic grade change and called a teacher for whatever reason etc.
You just don't include 12 more people into your 'crime'. It's not a secret anymore after that.
Still, 38 years is just nuts. Make him pass the highschool exams again, put him into community service (with the other 12 kids by the way.) Also fine him for a few thousand bucks for the trouble and that should be that. His parents will take care of the rest of the punishment, I am certain.
Anyway, Khaaaaaaan! I suppose.
You can't handle the truth.
Whilst I'm really not a lawyer, it's worth pointing out that the legal use of the word "Conspiracy" doesn't necessarily imply that it was a Government/Anarchic/Terrorism related thing.
As ever, Wikipedia has something to say on the matter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(crime)
"In the criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between natural persons to break the law at some time in the future, and, in some cases, with at least one overt act in furtherance of that agreement."
I'm at a loss for words. His misguided juvenile shenanigans could net him a longer sentence than rapists, murderers, pimps, drug dealers, etc. When I was a kid they would've hauled me into the office, given me a stern lecture, and encouraged me to use my skills in a productive & positive way.
This sort of outrageous over-reaction & immoral litigiousness only results in disdain for the legal system, law, and public institutions.
For the juvenile hacker, maybe community service plus a few months prison on probation.
In case of the telecoms, it is important that lawbreaking is not legalized by the mere say-so of the government. Because this would seriously undermine all laws that are designed to protect the citizens from government harassment.
The "helping in good faith" should count as mitigating circumstance, but not get them completely off the hook. Let's say fines for those reponsible, plus also a few months prison on probation.
C - the footgun of programming languages
This is one of the comments on the newspaper story:
He's NOT a hacker!
Jun 19, 2008 08:21
He's just lazy and stupid.
First off, this idiot goes to the same high-school as me - Tesoro High School. The guy is a total loser who just wastes his time trying to act cool and trying to "party it up" cause his family is relatively well off.
The "38 years in prison" is just a tagline. He *faces* that much time in prison because of the 69 seperate counts of felony charges, but he'll probably get a fine and probation and that's about it. (Well, that and getting blacklisted from the major schools that he had no shot of getting into.)
Secondly, since when has installing a keylogger program on a computer been considered hacking? In which case, we're all "hackers" cause we installed software on our PC. He doesn't know the first thing about programming. He asked me to fix his spyware infested computer on repeated occasions. The guy would get others to do his work for him and pay them off. He even asked people to take the SATs for him! jeez!
Lastly, he's a lazy idiot. He got caught AFTER he was denied admission to the UCs (yes, he still got rejected with his modified transcripts), when he tried to appeal the decision and have more transcripts sent out - that's when the counselor noticed the discrepency. If he had taken the time to study for the SATs instead, he'd be in by now, even with his terrible GPA.
What a ridiculous world we live in.
Amit
incoming government rays... put on your tin foil hat... must*not*get*along*with*rest*of*the*world!!!!
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
1 day your hacking grades the next day NORAD just to play a game.
What if they simply sentence him to an additional three years of high school?
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
I bet if he had instead changed some everyone's grades to "D-E-A-D-B-E-E-F" the judge would have just lold and put a "1337 Pwnage" into his permanent record instead.
I can agree to that. When I has in grad school I was applying for a scholarship (because I could not afford the school) and was told I was beat out by a foreign student with much better grades than me. A month later they offered me the scholarship (and instructor in charge told me that the transcript they received was forged and the student did not have perfect grades). So what this Omar guy did was trivialize the grades of the students who actually got good grades and worked hard for them (possibly ruining their chances at getting into a great school). The real victims are other students not the government or the education system.
Okay, let me try to parse this one out.
and who are all such sticklers for prosecuting lawbreakers, I'm sure you want to see this guy prosecuted too, right? Yes. but it is inconsistent to claim you are all so concerned about the law being followed when it is a corporation trying to help out after 9/11 When you say "help out" I assume you mean that time the telcos let the government illegally strip-mine all of our conversations with no judicial oversight whatsoever, just because someone in the intel service said "no, no, it's cool. You're fighting terrorists."Or did AT&T help a kitten out of a tree or something?
but when it is some hacker who is a lot more like you nerds than AT&T happens to be, will you be consistent? I don't even know what that's suppsed to mean. After all, who else's grades did he snoop into? Twelve of his friends. Did you even read the article? For the record, I think it is grossly excessive, and sad that young people can get 25+ years for doing things similar to what I did in high school when most of it wasn't illegal then. Breaking and entering, burglary, and falsification of public records wasn't illegal when you were in school? I am for telecom immunity for companies that tried to help after 9/11 in good faith, and relied on the government's assurances that they would not face legal sanction. I'm sure you are. I'd imagine that this hacker got no such assurances from authorities before he broke in! He's not a hacker. He's a common criminal and burglar who managed to see someone's password. Don't make him out to be anything else.A slap on the wrist may not be enough, but 38 years in prison? You just ruined this kid's life completely.
Why not just five years in a minimum security prison, with an emphasis on education? Rather than turn this kid into a hardened criminal by putting him in jail (where he will learn from other inmates) let's try to turn him around so he can be an asset to society instead of a liability when he gets out at age 56 with no life skills other than crime.
This kid isn't a genius. He's not talented. He isn't some sort of super child that did this because he was bored in school. He's a stupid script kiddie. He downloaded a keylogger from the internet then broke into the school office and installed it. What a computer wiz. The kid's a douche and this sentence probably just saves the court some time down the road. And he won't even get 38 years anyway so quit whining about how long that is.
He is facing "up to" 38 years. That means that if you take all of the charges against him, and he gets the max prison term for all of them, he will be in jail for 38 years. The chances of that happening are zero. What is going to happen is that if the evidence against him is good enough where he (his lawyers) think that he can't win, he will just make a plea deal with the prosecutors. If he serves any time after pleading guilty and making a plea deal, it will likely be under a year. In all likelihood he will just get put on probation for a few years. Probation sucks, but it beats prison... and well, it is supposed to suck. It is a punishment, and punishments tend to suck.
I think some of you are misunderstanding how the legal system works. He faces 38 years in prison. Thats a maximum, just like you can face a maximum of 6 months in jail for rather meager crimes that you typically just pay a fine for. Most likely the judge will sentence him to just a couple of years and if the kid is good he'll get out in a matter of months at his parole hearing. He might also get one of those screwball "Can't use the Internet" sentencing or such in exchange for reduced time. He's 18 years old, but in this case they'll still treat him like he's a kid.
Jesus fucking christ people, why is it whenever a story like this comes out everyone jumps on the statutory MAXIMUMS. The kid committed *69* felony counts and it is possible, though highly unlikely, that the MAXIMUM jail time he could face for ALL these charges is 38 years. If you think hackers should face NO penalties for their actions then grow a pair, step on the sop box and say so but don't keep harping on statutory MAXIMUMS as if they are evil incarnate that you must rid the world of.
Or we could fix the jails so that they aren't training camps for would-be criminals.
http://outcampaign.org/
More accurately--the kid just ruined his own life completely. Taking responsibility for choices we make is all part of growing up.
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
That's a good idea. A good way to do this is fill them with people who aren't criminals, then they can't pass on their knowledge of crime to other prisoners. But I think they are doing this already!
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
But you don't threaten to lock him up for almost 40 years, unless he's an immigrant...named Omar, I guess. An actor's or politician's kid from Beverly Hills might make the front page of the National Inquirer and that would be the end of it.
What?
Why not just five years in a minimum security prison, with an emphasis on education?
Because if they really crack down on "illegal" immigration, the prisons will be our only source of near free labor.
What?
Actually, that should be funded by "state" taxes. Very little federal money funds the public education systems of various states and that money is generally earmarked for specific purposes outside education like the school lunch and breakfast programs.
When you look at the dollar amount spent on public education in any given state, the entire federal budget for education is generally a small in comparison of that. Take ohio for instance, It spends around 11-19 billion in primary and secondary education each year before any federal money is assessed. In comparison, the feds (NEA) only spent 38 billion on the same education. If that were divided by the 50 states, that's like 700 million or so per state and this isn't counting DC or outlying territories. When we look at the fact of some stated being poorer then others, needing more funding, it goes down even more. But for the majority of situations, federal funding is going to be only a small fraction of most every state's education funding.
I will agree that the school represents the government but for different reasons. These reasons are that the government has put their faith behind the results and reporting of these schools to provide legitimacy to them. The federal government has an interest in a state's credential too. When someone undermines that by purposely presenting false information or altering information certified by the state, then there is a reason to be concerned. In essence, I see changing grades as being no different then fake IDs or impersonating a police officer to defraud someone.
We look at the crime, but not at the intention behind it. If we did, the same punishment should be meted out for someone who is caught cheating on his tests. The intended result is the same: Getting a grade he didn't earn the "legal" way.
Why is hacking a computer to fudge the grade worse than using cheat sheets? Why isn't anyone who cribbed his doctor thesis facing 40ish years in prison (which is, IMO, a worse offense than cheating with your grades, we're talking about a thesis that allows you to bear a title, which does hold a lot of meaning in some countries)?
Look at the crime, not at the way it was committed.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Whoah, subtle ;)
This is the sig that says NI (again)
How much of Ohio's 11-19 billion is spent on processing paperwork to receive the ~700 million in federal money? Approximately 9 years ago, one of the national high school debate topics was how to improve education in the US. A surprising number of teams advocated abolishing the national Dept. of education. Many of them cited situation where districts had to hire extra personnel in order to process all the paperwork ensuring that they were in compliance with federal regulations and requirements. The paperwork ate up a pretty good chunk of that federal money in most cases.
Warning: I am NOT a lawyer. I am just a self defense advocate and gun collector who has read multiple state laws on self defense and firearm laws.
It really depends on your state and jurisdiction, even in the USA.
It varies. Today, many states have an automatic 'fear for life/SBH' for an intruder in your house. In Texas, during hours of darkness, felony theft on your property may be responded to by deadly force. If they're in your house, you may respond with deadly force at any time.
This is varied a bit in that some liberal cities within the state don't like that, and aren't particularly caring if they follow the law - you get a fair number of self defense cases that they'll push all the way to court, even knowing it doesn't have a snowball's chance. Heck, look back at texas and the incidents in one county where the police entered bars and arrested patrons for public drunkeness. No fights, no noise complaints. Premeditated raid to do this. Their stated goal was to reduce drunk driving - yet they arrested even people who had rooms in the attached hotel.
Thus, I figure anything but the most blatant act of self defense will cost over $30k, possibly quite a bit more.
In my town - somebody breaks in and I shoot them. Likely result: A pat on the back.
Texas rural - same deal
Texas, Dallas - some runaround.
Lincoln or Omaha, NE - probably a few days in jail until they find that they don't have any real evidence that it wasn't self defense.
In Chicago or DC - murder and wrongful death charges, showy trial leading to aquital. After tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of lawyers bills. Or they'll drop charges after holding me in jail for six months without bail.
Now, don't get me wrong. I am a serious advocate of self defense, concealed carry, and all. By the same token - taking a human life is serious. Therefore I don't mind if somebody who has to drop the hammer on an intruder is arrested. What I DO want is a thorough investigation followed by a quick release when it's determined to be self defense.
I don't read AC A human right
I'm not sure about a figure but I suspect it would be significant because not only does the state have to do an accounting, but each district does as well.
I read a report a while back and I can't find it to link to now, but it said much of the same things. It went on to break down the actual effectiveness of every federal dollar which was astonishing low. less then 50 cents on the dollar. And of that, half had to be spent in specific ways which was tied to some other program which means if the state didn't fund the program and operate it a certain way with federal monies, it locked them out of certain other funds and opertunities. The report might have been part of one of those debates, I don't remember where I saw it.
My niece's school explained to us that if she ate breakfast at school instead of at home where it should be done at, that they would be eligible for some other funding related to class size and preschool opportunities for low income parents. They even sent applications home for the free lunch program and gave parents suggestions on how to qualify because a significant amount of federal funding was tied directly to that also. I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't right in suggesting the removal of the department of education.
It seems to me, though, that by devauling education to the point where a high school diploma is basically worthless and a college degree is equivalent to what a diploma used to be, as a culture we Americans send a message to everyone that the grades have no inherent value anyways, they're just another hoop to jump through.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
Yes you do, the 38 years quoted in the article is particularly inflammatory as its the maximum he could get for all of his charges back to back. He won't get the maximum on any convictions (people rarely do), and he almost certainly won't get back-to-back sentencing, his terms will be concurrent. If convicted, he will most likely get anything from a suspended sentence to a couple of years.
American criminal jurisprudence is not intended to be equitable, but punitive--it is civil courts, not criminal courts, that deal with issues of equity. And breaking and entering is a lot more severe than "hacking a high school."
If you're non-American, there's certainly reason to understand why you might not understand the distinction (though I'll bet a dollar to a stale doughnut that whatever country you come from has an almost identical system). And if you are American, perhaps Civics class was not the most propitious time to practice recto-cranial insertion.
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
Trumped up charges are one thing, trumped up charges versus hubris are another. Hubris is the exception to the rule. If he got caught due to the school system doing a period review of its records or something official and typical like that, then sure, they're being unusually harsh with the kid. That's not the case. The kid was arrogant and stupid enough to ask the school for a transcript, with the school knowing damn well that this kid couldn't possibly be accepted to a university, not with his shitty grades. That's hubris, and that's why this kid's in jail with 69 criminal charges and a $50,000 bail.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell.
"We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security." Dwight Eisenhower