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Cyber-criminal Left In Charge of Prison Computer Network
samzenpus writes "A 27-year-old man serving six years for stealing £6.5million using forged credit cards over the internet was recruited to help write code needed for the installation of an internal prison TV station. He was left unguarded with unfettered access to the system and produced results that anyone but prison officials could have guessed. He installed a series of passwords on all the machines, shutting down the entire prison computer system. A prison source said, 'It's unbelievable that a criminal convicted of cyber-crime was allowed uncontrolled access to the hard drive. He set up such an elaborate array of passwords it took a specialist company to get it working.'"
6.5 million pounds vs. six years in prison. Considering 20 years in cube for about 2.5 million pounds total, this crime thing is looking like a better alternative career!
Interesting that inmates have access to computers and TV. I'm glad we pay for that for them while normal citizens are having a hard time finding a job...
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Thats almost as dumb as putting a Halliburton CEO in charge of the entire military.
Luckily nothing that stupid would ever happen here in America.
You're right, that never happened. While Dick Cheney was at one point the CEO of Halliburton, he was in charge of the U.S. military before he worked for Halliburton. As Vice President he had no authority over the military.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
does it mean nobody should be ever given a chance? This guy acted pretty dumb, knowing that he be caught for sure. It's too bad someone else is now less likely to be given a chance to put their skills for good purpose after screwing up.
Just because he had no "authority" didn't mean he didn't assert control. I seem to recall that it was Cheney's office that provided the falsified intelligence that was used to justify the war in Iraq. Authority is only required if you have ethics.
My question is, why? I can understand stealing credit card information due to the financial side of things. Why would he pull a stunt like this? So he can get an extended prison sentence, and have no hope of being let out on parole? When you're in prison, do you want to piss off the prison staff? Do you know what happens when you do that? Idiot.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
And this felon had "no authority" over the prison computer system.
You don't need "authority", you just need access.
Just because he had no "authority" didn't mean he didn't assert control. I seem to recall that it was Cheney's office that provided the falsified intelligence that was used to justify the war in Iraq. Authority is only required if you have ethics.
Such an asinine statement. Who has more ethics, the asshole gassing the Kurds or the asshole that bombs the asshole gassing the Kurds (regardless of the reason)?
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
That would be restitution, retribution, and rehabilitation. All three are necessary. Rarely are all three implemented. To whatever extent is possible, the victims of the crime should receive restitution (from the offender, not from the public at large). Punishment is needed to make certain that crime does not pay (if crime does pay, and the pay is better than the criminal can legally earn, we will have crime). Rehabilitation is required to minimize the chance of the criminal re-offending. If said criminal lacks the means to get and hold a decent job, the chances of re-offending are high. If he has the means of getting and holding a decent job, the chances of re-offending are reduced (but not nil).
linquendum tondere
...should always have been done so under supervision and with logging...
I agree with the logging side, but if they give him Admin then all the log will contain is him locating and killing the logging script (This CAN be avoided, but I doubt that they would have gone through that much trouble even if they were logging). The supervision probably would have been pointless though. More than likely, it would be a trained guard standing over him watching him do EXACTLY what he did. And, if asked what he was doing, he'd explain that he was adjusting permissions so that everything would work. If they hired somebody to supervise that could accurately determine whether he was being malicious, they could probably just ask the supervisor to do the job.
Hell, if you ask me to supervise an inmate in a chem lab while he brews up aspirin and he's actually making nitroglycerin, I'd probably stand there and ignorantly watch him make nitroglycerin.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
How about the asshole who gave the asshole gassing the Kurds the gas in the first place?
Oh right, that would be Donald Rumsfeld who completed that deal during the Reagen administration, not Richard Cheney.
I'm sorry when exactly do you think Regan took office? The Iraqi's were trying to kill all the Kurds since about 1960. Killing the Kurds and stealing their oilfields. So what if the gas was purchased and used later, the genocide attempt was going on for 20 years prior.
I just love it when the frothing-at-the-mouth liberals try to blame a single, US "official" for doing something EVEYRONE FUCKING KNOWS was the right thing to do, even if the reason was falsified.
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
Why would they hire some guy so inept he got caught TWICE?
For the same reason the US keeps buying stuff from China.
eg. it's *cheap*
Obviously the prison didn't have anyone IT saavy or they never would have relied on an inmate. As I understand it, he simply changed some admin passwords and set the bios password. When they couldn't figure out how to change things back, they refused to let the guy show them how to fix it and hire an outside consultant.
Wait a sec, have the goal posts moved again? It was about weapons of mass destruction, then it was about bringing democracy to masses yearning for it, then it was about protecting the Sunnis from the Shiite forces that we kind of, um, unleashed on them, and now it's payback for the Kurds?
I think the real motivation was to revive the corpse of Gilgamesh and create a new race of super-warriors, but that's just my theory.
I mean, come on. The man must have known that he would get caught, which leads me to wonder if in fact he really did anything wrong.
Anybody here who wrote a program for a prison system would consider it irresponsible to NOT set passwords. But before you are given a chance to explain the very good reasons for what you've done, the big men with truncheons who are already watching you like a hawk assume the worst and start running around like Chicken Little with the sky falling.
That's my guess.
And chickens just LOVE it when the sky falls; it gives them a sense of purpose and an excuse to play 'hero'. Heck, I know a couple of cops, and they are good people, but their world view is very slanted due to regular exposure to the criminal element. Without a healthy means of grounding to the real world, their sense of reality can become wildly inaccurate. Add to that some over-enlarged ego, lots of fear, pack-mentality and a bit of down-home stupid, and you're looking at a system where innocence is not assumed and some really terrible things can -and do- happen.
I'm not saying the guy was mister pure-heart, but I bet the whole story isn't being represented here. --What with the hysteria that both police and the media typically spin themselves into over anything to do with computer 'hackers', I think this is entirely likely.
But it appears that many posters here aren't capable of remembering the patterns they see in the news wrt this kind of story. Hackers!
-FL
Maybe he decided that with the depression taking it's toll on the outside world and all that getting "LIFE" in prison was the best job stability he could hope for.
Yup that was my first reaction too. They let you on a box to install a prison-wide TV system so what do you do?
A. Install the system, get the props from your fellow inmates who know you are responsible for keeping their new toy running; get props from the authorities, increasing your chances of an early release; build enough trust that maybe in the future you'll be allowed somewhere near a box to do other fun stuff,
OR,
B. SNAFU the system, volunteer as the authorities' punching bag; blow your chances of an early release; and ensure you will not be allowed anywhere near anything more advanced than a transistor radio for the next 5 years?
Which just goes to show that intelligence doesn't immunise you against stupidity.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke