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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.'"
...hire these people for the FBI or something? At least that's how the movies go...
Slashdot is too nerdy for me.
Where's a "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag when you one?
Some cyber-criminal stole my 'need'!
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Chicken Coop, Inc. is proud to announce the promotion of Mr. Fox to the position of chief of security...
The case of Kevin Mitnick, who was initially restricted from using any sort of communications technology whatsoever (no computer access at all, no mobile phone, etc.), other than a landline telephone...
You're a computer guy, right? My cousin's kid been trying to help us with this TV station thing we're doing but I don't think he knows what he's doing. Plus he's starting soccer now and he doesn't have much time anymore. It's not like you don't, eh? Heh heh.
Anyway, can you help? We use The Windows and all that so it's pretty standard.
You will? Thanks buddy - I'll see that you get some extra "unmonitored" visits from the little lady this month.
Sexual offenders run the prison rape-prevention program.
No, that's already run by designated "I'll be your daddy and protect you from the others" representatives, fairly elected by the general population.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
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...
Considering most of them are in their for minor drug charges and are no more evil than you or me...
And that most of the tax money goes into the hands of the private corporations running the prisons and use the inmates for sub minimum wage labor at a profit which none goes back to the tax payers.
So simple solution... Reform the laws and decriminalize these minor offenses and revoke the contracts with the private corporations running these prisions.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
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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. . . is assigned in prison to garden detail . . . and is given . . . a chainsaw!
The prison now has a few open bunks.
The prison psychologist stated, "I hoped that we could discover how to do pleasant things with a chainsaw, instead of nasty things."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Or starring Jeffrery Dahmer on an episode of Iron Chef.
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
Oddly enough, when I start googling for statistics to support your statement, I find things that say that there are fewer Drug offenders in prison that people convicted of Property crimes, and fewer of both those groups combined than people convicted of Violent crimes.
In other words, drug charges, major or minor, account for about 22% of the prison population in the USA.
Oh, and 55% of the prison population are in for violent crimes, and the remainder for property crimes.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
There where those few hours while Bush was at the doctor's.
Because I'm sure he had time to either squander, launder or hide a lot of his take. It's not like criminals open a domestic bank account and deposit their loot then report it to the queen. This dude may be broke, but then again, he may have a bundle waiting for him when he gets out. Or, he may have lived large while he was operating and now he's paying the price. Still, I think it is comparable to cubical life. People who work for corporations that knowingly screw consumers aren't really on a higher moral ground in my opinion.
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.
Neither GP nor GPP specifically mentioned "prison" inmates, many drug offenders go to jail and are not included in your statistics. As someone who is about to go to jail for growing funny plants in my attic, I have to say.. what a way to waste your money.
I think executing someone for changing the password on a computer may be a little harsh. I mean, it's not like he installed Windows ME on it.
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.
Ok, I wanted to link to a comment in a previous story here, where someone complained about everything being "cyber-" this and "cyber-" that, and that it makes you sound like it came from the 80s.
I answered, that he then might not like my new "CyberCyber Virtu@l e-Cloud Turbo CoolClick iNetExplorer 2000 XFX GTX - Ultimate Social Web 2.0 Gold Edition"... or something like that.
But strangely, the comment vanished from the face of the net. I searched Google, and even manually went trough all recent articles here containing "cyber". Especially "cybercyber". It's gone!
How can that happen? Anyone care to explain, or find it, even if it's OT? Because this is really strange...
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
An asshole who bombs the asshole who is bombing the Kurds while telling us that the reason he is bombing the asshole who is bombing the Kurds is because that asshole is bombing the Kurds is not such an asshole. OUR asshole, however, was an asshole who was bombing the asshole who was bombing the Kurds while lying out of his ass that the reason he is bombing the asshole who is bombing the Kurds is because the asshole who is bombing the Kurds is getting ready to bomb US, which he wasn't.
So the asshole was thinking if he told the truth he might not get to bomb and so he will lie to get his way. That asshole was supposed to work for us, by the way.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
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.
...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!
Still, I think it is comparable to cubical life.
OK, that may be the most ignorant, presumptive thing I've read all day. I've seen prisons and I work in a cubicle. The two situations are nothing alike.
Prisoners get access to a gym and exercise yard...
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Sorry, I don't agree. The recidivism rate here is high because it's impossible to get a job with a conviction. It doesn't really matter what you do in prison, whether you just get in fights and get tattoos, or if you learn some useful skill with computers. Either way, you're going to be unemployed when you get out, and most likely your only way to survive will be to become a career criminal.
This isn't a government problem; it's private companies that won't hire ex-cons. However, it is partially the government's fault for keeping Prohibition going for decades, creating a whole class of people who can't work normal jobs because they went to prison for possessing naturally-growing plants.
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in charge of the Federal Reserve
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
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.
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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
What you don't understand is that in many other Western countries, people actually get their slate cleaned when they have served their sentence. Employers are not allowed to ask about or investigate former criminal records, except in very special circumstances. Discrimination based on a person's past is as illegal as discrimination based on gender, religion (including lack thereof) or sexual orientation.
So convicts can really get jobs afterwards, unlike in the US, where every sentence in reality is a life sentence.
Take a look at statistics for various countries. And what the countries have in common.
There's a very clear correlation between the countries that abhor justice being used as a tool for vengeance and both low crime rates in general and low recidivism rates.
And no, it's not the drug crimes that solely is the reason for the high statistics in the US. Free all drug "criminals", and you'll still have more than five times as many people imprisoned as countries like e.g. the Scandinavian ones. And a much higher recidivism rate too.
Like it or not, the US justice system is based on vengeance (as preached by certain religions), and vengeance never reduces violence.
This isn't a government problem; it's private companies that won't hire ex-cons.
Do companies in the US have access to that kind of information? In the Netherlands, these records are private, but companies often will require a "declaration of no objection" from new hires for positions of trust. These are requested from the police, and the declaration (if issued) will state that the applicant has nothing in his record indicating a risk for the position he applies for. This to ensure a convicted embezzler doesn't get to work as an accountant again, or a child molester gets a job at a day care center, or a violent criminal a membership at a gun range, while keeping irrelevant facts on that record private.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I'm not an expert on this as I've never been convicted of (or arrested for) a crime, so this is just from what I've heard and read. Most employment applications ask if you've ever been convicted of a crime (other than speeding/parking tickets), yes/no. Answering this falsely can mean immediate termination if they ever find out, and possibly even get you sued (not likely). However, for them to find out means they'd have to do a background check. I'm pretty sure conviction information is publicly available, and background checking agencies specialize in finding that stuff. Not all employers do background checks; government jobs requiring a clearance obviously do this, and certain other jobs too, but most probably don't. As an embedded software developer, I think I've only had two, one when I was doing an internship for a military contractor, and at my most recent job which is in the financial industry. I don't think the other jobs did any background checks, and mostly didn't even bother checking references either.
A quick Google search turned up some Yahoo! Answers questions about this topic, with totally different answers: 1) Honesty is the best policy, some employers will understand, etc., and 2) Honestly will keep you unemployed because no one will hire an ex-con when people with clean records are available.
It sounds like your system in the Netherlands is much better, since most jobs don't need to know your criminal record (of course, unless you're around children, or large sums of money). Of course, your system on narcotics is much better too so that doesn't surprise me. We still haven't learned the lessons of Prohibition after 80 years, though unfortunately most other countries are making the exact same mistake.
Dark Helmet:
How many Assholes we got on this ship, any how?
Everyone:
Yo!
Dark Helmet:
I knew it. I'm surrounded by Assholes. *closes helmet* Keep firing, Assholes!
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
IN PRISON: You spend the majority of your time in a 10X10 cell.
AT WORK: You spend the majority of your time in an 8X8 cubicle.
IN PRISON: You get three meals a day.
AT WORK: You get a break for one meal and you have to pay for it.
IN PRISON: You get time off for good behavior.
AT WORK: You get more work for good behavior.
IN PRISON: The guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you.
AT WORK: You must often carry a security card and open all the doors for yourself.
IN PRISON: You can watch TV and play games.
AT WORK: You could get fired for watching TV and playing games.
IN PRISON: You get your own toilet.
AT WORK: You have to share the toilet with some people who pee on the seat.
IN PRISON: They allow your family and friends to visit.
AT WORK: You arenÃâât even supposed to speak to your family.
IN PRISON: All expenses are paid by the taxpayers with no work required.
AT WORK: you get to pay all your expenses to go to work, and they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners.
IN PRISON: You spend most of your life inside bars wanting to get out.
AT WORK: You spend most of your time wanting to get out and go inside bars.
IN PRISON: You must deal with sadistic wardens.
AT WORK: They are called managers.
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