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Student Charged With Three Felonies For Finding Security Flaw — and Report
Well, yet another teenage hacker who "did the right thing" by reporting a security flaw is being punished for his actions. Although it definitely sounds like the whole story may not be in the clear yet, a 15-year-old New York high school student has been charged with three felonies claiming that he accessed a file containing social security numbers, driver's license numbers, and home addresses of past and present employees ... and then sent an anonymous email to the principal alerting him to the security flaw. "All that was needed to access the information was a district password. School officials have admitted that thousands of students, faculty and employees could have accessed the same file for up to two weeks."
Was there any bit of responsible disclosure, because it sounds a bit like "killing the messenger". While there may be discipline in order, this seems to be overkill if he was really intending to do the right thing.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Reporting a security hole is not noble, it's stupid.
As in, being hit with the law book.
I RTFA but see no sign of this. At best is this bit from a followup link in TFA:
But for fuck's sake, three felonies at 15? For a fucking non-violent, non-destructive "offense"?
Poor kid is screwed for life.
stupid people fear smart people
The Admin and the Engineer
Well, if we are to play analogies war : yes it is a bit like that, except it is impossible to say that the fence has a hole in it without trying to go through.
Also, it may look like you have accessed the first fence of several concentric fence. Before reporting this hole as a problem, it sounds reasonable to assess if anything is put at risk first. Once you see that there are many valuable things accessible, you go away and go knock on the door "Hey do you know that all these valuables of yours are easily accessible ?" and also "I gave you some stuff of mine to keep safe, I hope you didn't put it in this easily accessible area ?"
Or you don't use fence metaphor...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
This means this person, capable of not only using the internet but as a (clearly) (semi-) advanced user, is now no longer able to vote...because of something they did before they were legally eligible in the first place? And something they admitted to? Yet someone who doesn't know their left hand from a donkey's a-hole and votes based entirely on which guy they'd rather drink a beer with and/or whichever has a photo-op with someone who looks more like them is free to do the same AND drive drunk AND steal potentially thousands (but not over 10 thousand or so, depending on the state) AND even rape in some cases and still vote.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
This is like Boston freaking out over Lite-Brites. I hope the kid not only calls their bluff and asks for a jury trial, but finds some way to counter-sue.
And one who breaks security is like the one who alerts the king about wearing no clothes. You WILL get punished. You WILL be dealt with.
I saw this all the time at schools, jobs and like. People dont like smart people. People who intentionally find broken ideas and mechanisms will be dealt with, not glorified and congratulated. Highlighting a security problem means they have to put in the effort to fix what you brought to their attention, or threaten you to STFU.
If you are smart about security, keep your mouth shut. There's not much you can do, except yourself be a target.
If you're baiting your honeypot with real data, you're doing it wrong.
Blank until
This is bullshit - I am really tired of hearing these scenarios where ignorant fascist assholes are doing serious damage to the reputation and future of kids who are doing the right thing.
The message being sent is that rather than being honest, helpful and productive member of networked society we're teaching kids that it's better to be deceptive and not expose dangerous security flaws. ...and FELONIES? What the fuck?!
I feel that there is a message that both the powers that be (and irresponsible sys admins who have been professionally shamed by these revelations) want to send - the sysadmins don't want to be embarrassed by kids - the feds or police either don't understand and are hearing sys admins tell them that "these meddling kids broke into our system, it's certainly not MY fault for not securing it" or people who should know better thinking that it's better to send the message that killing the messenger is the appropriate way to handle security, EG what people don't know won't hurt them and what we don't see we wont have to deal with.
I believe that this should be explained to those who aren't very computer/network literate with the following analogy: Let's say you live in one of those multifloor apartment buildings where there is an area in the lobby with many mailboxes which all lock. Each resident gets a key for their own box. This kid either accidentally (or just to see if his and other mailboxes are secure) plugs the key into the wrong box or a box that isn't his and finds that his key (and by logic every other resident's key) opens every mailbox in the building. The mailbox he tests the key on contains an envelope with a ton of cash sticking out of it. He goes to the landlord and says "hey, these keys provide no security because any key can open all mailboxes, and by the way, this mailbox had a ton of cash in it - here's the cash, I didn't want it to get stolen" and he is then arrested and charged with breaking and entering, grand larceny, and other such offenses.
I hope that if any high profile tech people get a chance to comment on this in the press or end up assisting the defense (if it was to go to trial) that they can send a message that criminalizing someone who is doing the right thing is just wrong...
From my own personal experience as a student that used to do these sort of things (report network security flaws to the relevant department), the unfortunate truth is that it's much better to keep your mouth shut.
Kids like this should be praised. He decided to report something he could easily do a lot of mischief with.
It doesn't matter that the server was misconfigured, or used a default password. What matters is what he did.
He didn't accidentally find this something. He went looking for security hole, found one, used it to look around where he was not supposed to have access, then reported it anonymously. Then, an investigation followed and they found him.
That is the equivalent of him walking down a street and trying each door and window to see if it was open, finding one, going in to the house and looking around, then anonymously reporting what he had done to the police. In the real world it is breaking and entering (look up the law before you say "no breaking occurred").
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Forget that this kid was doing a service to report the flaw, they are more concerned with why the kid was trying to access the site in the first place.
OK, I know Slashdot is collectively in holier-than-thou rage over this poor, "innocent" kid, but why was the kid trying to access the site in the first place?
It seems to me that he's not being punished for reporting something, he'd being dealt with because he probably broke the law.
Of course, the officials responsible for the shoddy security and data protection should also be dealt with under whatever laws apply in that jurisdiction. But that doesn't excuse a kid who actively went on a fishing expedition. The end cannot be allowed to justify the means in cases like this, or you undermine the basic principle of the laws: you give carte blanche to crackers to have a go at whatever they like, since if they get in, they can just report it and pretend they were doing the world a favour.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
You keep using that phrase, "copied the files to his computer". I don't think it means what you think it means.
In discussions like this, it might merely mean that the kid accessed a protected area by accident, and his web browser "copied the file to his computer". Law Enforcement sometimes misuses the mere presence of data on the suspect's computer as the standard for proof of guilt, which is sometimes only the browser cache or even the cache for a filesharing program, when the user may not even know what the heck was in it.
The file name undoubtedly was not "click here to get 3 felony charges file against you and seriously fuck up the rest of your life" . The kid appears to have been doing the right thing. Now, if he tried to sell any of the data that he saw, sure, charges might be appropriate. Based on what little public information is available, this appears to be a case of shooting the messenger.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
What, exactly, do they mean by that? Remember, we're talking about governmental entities that have a long history of not understanding much about computer security. For example:
$ ftp ftp.myschool.edu
Connected to ftp.myschool.edu
User (none): guest
331 Enter email address for anonymous login password
Password: myusername@yahoo.com
230 User guest logged in.
FTP>
Law Enforcement: "Clearly he was trying to impersonate Mr. Guest!"
You: !@#@#$
You think that's too silly? It's no worse than any number of other things I've heard about from such people. Or consider this:
You: "Let's see if that cute girl Angela in my English class has put up a home page on the school computer system. Let's see, use Firefox to browse to www.myschool.edu/~angela/ ... That's odd, doesn't look like what she'd have on her home page. What's this file?"
Cops: "Clearly he was trying to break into the Assistant Principal Angela H's computer work area!"
I don't think these examples are unrepresentative of the typical computer security understanding of law enforcement, unfortunately.
At least a couple of the articles say that the password he used (whatever that means, see my other comments on the subject) belonged to "another student." Oh, really?! Why did that other student have access to the data?! And why isn't he being charged?!
Clearly what we have been told about this incident is highly misleading. Either
(1) The file was in a location that could be accessed by ANYONE on the school network, or
(2) it had already been hacked by another student, who for some reason is not being charged, or
(3) He hacked into an administrative area, where the file may have been inadequately secured. Comments by the administration and law enforcement to the effect that the password he used belonged to another student are either incorrect or misleading.
Something is clearly rotten about this story, unfortunately it is difficult to tell if he did anything wrong or not, or whether he is a criminal or a scapegoat. Not only do we have to get information filtered through the administration and law enforcement (for whom computer security is usually at best an arcane art that they understand only poorly if at all), but all the primary sources are articles written by local news journalists rather than technical journalists, who are generally not much better at understanding the technical details.
It would appear however that unless he needed to hack into a reasonably well protected account in order to obtain the data, the school is clearly facing a serious HIPAA breach. That alone could be making them overreact, by trying to find some way - any way - to pin the blame on someone else.
Yes, but I've personally been in situations where I was looking around on a network for a file (which I was supposed to try to find) and ended up wandering into a supposedly heavily restricted server (which I almost got fired for).
It sounds like a similar situation here. The kid is curious, so he's looking around the network. He shouldn't have used someone else's password, and I think that's the only thing he did wrong here. Its possible that his own account would have even worked.
And while it is true that you need to be cautious with people wandering through networks, it isn't that difficult to secure a network against people wandering, at least as such a basic level. That can all be controlled by aliases. Feh, I could start wandering into philosophy and analyze the differences between Consequentialist and Deontological ethics, but I don't think anyone wants to read another term paper.
The long and short of it is that you can't know anything more about why he was poking around than what he tells you.
And apparently the correct punishment is hanging by the neck until dead?
In the RTFA department: No where does it say that he guessed a password or used a stolen password.
And apparently you must not have comprehended what you read. No where does it say that he will be punished by hanging. In fact, he is charged with felonies, but has NOT been convicted or sentenced. So before you fly off the handle, let's see how things go, M'Kay? Chances are that he will get off with a $250 fine and community service. Probably not a bad thing with some kid with too much time on his hands that he goes hacking around in shit he shouldn't be.
The lesson here is to get better at sending "anonymous" e-mail to report this stuff.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...