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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.'"
Civilized countries rehabilitate prisoners, and yes, that includes schooling them on what they will find in society once they've served their sentence.
The alternative, a punishment based system like in the US, causes those coming out of prison to be unemployable, and their only recourse is crime. Which is one of the main reasons why the recidivism rate and percent of the population in prison is much higher in the US than in other western countries.
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Interesting that inmates have access to computers and TV.
Imagine a group of people with little respect for authority, and, in many cases, a history of violence.
Now take away their TV.
Do you really think that putting down prison riots is cheaper than just letting them vegetate in front of the idiot box? Are you, a normal citizen, volunteering for that job? I'm sure there's an opening there.
I think the poster that you're replying to was implying that the six year sentence is hardly a deterrent for the amount that the criminal was convicted for stealing. If stealing 6.5 million pounds gets you six years in the slammer, and the alternative is working 20 years for only 2.5 million pounds, then suddenly the risk of getting caught doesn't seem so bad.
(Well, I wouldn't want to even spend one minute in prison, let alone six years, but that's just me :-D )
I think their whole point was that six years is way too small of a sentence for someone who stole that much money, not that he got to keep it after he was released. Keep in mind, there are cyber-criminals that are still at large, so there are some that get away with it. They usually get caught only when they don't know their boundaries and try to go for TOO much.
Best "String" Ever!
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.
...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.
I'm guessing you went to The Bureau of Justice Stastics site, which indeed says that in 2005, 53% were for violent crimes, 19% were property crimes, and 19% were drug crimes (it also says 8% are "public order" crimes; i.e., bullshit "crimes" like public intoxiction or prostitution).
While it's a relief that half of the prisoners aren't in there for drugs, fully one in five inmates are incarcerated for drugs.
It gives 2008 numbers for how many there are, but 20% of 2,310,984 is 462,197. Half a million Americans are imprisoned for drug crimes. And when they get out of prison, where will they get their money? Nobody wants to hire an ex-con. I would guess that for many of the violent and property offenders, it wasn't their first visit. How many started out getting busted for dope, then couldn't get work and stole to eat?
20% of prisoners, half a million people. It's a huge problem.
Free Martian Whores!
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
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