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Fired IT Worker Replaces CEO's Presentation With Porn
An anonymous reader writes "52-year-old Walter Powell wanted revenge when he was fired from his position as an IT manager at Baltimore Substance Abuse System Inc. So, he hacked into their systems — installing keyloggers to steal passwords. Then, when his CEO was giving a presentation to the board of directors he replaced the slides with pornographic images. Powell has now been given a 2 year suspended sentence, and 100 hours community service."
For no jail time, I think it was almost worth it. Too bad Terry Childs didn't get the same deal.
He should have substituted his presentation to a community group, city hall or some other public presentation. Showing porn to the board of directors is 2nd only to showing them increasing profits.
I wonder what the sentence would have be if he replaced the slides with puppies or butterflies instead of porn? Less perhaps?
When you walk away from a job there is nothing more satisfying than letting it fall to shit after you go. Doing something on the way out or after you leave just proves you didn't have any positive effect on the business.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Smells like he might have gotten his idea from this recent SMBC Theater video. (NSFW)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
why are six of the last 7 stories tagged with 'idiocracy'?
I'm glad he's not actually in jail, otherwise I would have to start a FREE WALTER POWELL movement.
Proverbs 21:19
And that's the best he could do? Girly pictures during a presentation. What a loser. Probably still lives in his parent's basement.
The story says "porn", but not what kind of porn...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
How did the presentation go?
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
This story reminds me of a friend who, 20 years ago, was the IT person for a small aerospace startup that ran a Macintosh network with a single dial-in. (He may even be reading this: hats off, Mr Jones!)
They fired him, unamicably, and failed to change the passwords on the dialup (among other mistakes not later abused). So he decided to get his revenge by dialing in and sending multiple copies of a word document to every printer in the company (501 copies, iirc, guaranteed to empty every paper tray). The document was a quote from the Blonde Bimbo Office Manager ("BBOM"), in 36-point Helvetica:
"I've been at the bottom, and I've been at the top. I don't care how much dick I have to suck, I'm not going to be at the bottom again." Signed, [BBOM]
I was still there when it happened. The best part was, the BBOM took a stack of these printouts to every person in the building, shrieking: "Did you do this? Did YOU do this??" Nobody know who did it, in fact I think few even suspected the dialup.*
Now those are some lulz.
[*I didn't know it was him until months later, after the company laid off 90% of its staff, including me. Its doors shut a year later.]
I can see the fnords!
It's not an IT thing. Everyone does this.
I was the IT guy for a company that did company restructuring, or failing that, liquidation. If you've ever been to Ohio and you're the right age you'll remember Carpet Barn and Tile House. I was the guy who liquidated their technical assets. That's a fancy way of saying the boss gave me a truck and a map and said "if it's worth more than 2 cents and plugs into something, put it on the truck." So I got to see every single Carpet Barn.
Now to be fair, they closed very suddenly. It was a Thursday. Workers showed up to locked doors. Salesmen had taken down payments from customers the previous day. The money was lost and never refunded, people didn't get their carpet. It was a bad scene.
You should have seen these places.
Workers opened up the doors with bolt cutters and trashed every single outlet. Holes kicked in the walls, refrigerators turned over, coffee pots smashed into copiers. Office furniture beaten into splinters. Carpet rolls thrown everywhere. Every store looked like the scene of a riot.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I'd say that's a pretty appropriate story for a blog named "Naked Security."
I can see the fnords!
but I bet that guy got his sentence, and said... "WORTH IT!"
When someone pulls a stunt like this, all they're doing is making it hard for everyone.
Pics or it didn't happen
Of course there is an argument that if he was sufficiently ignorant to get himself caught, then he deserved to get sacked in the first place....
Next time slightly alter the presentation to make it look incompetent
For most PowerPoint presentations, that is accomplished without making any edit to the original.
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When the idiots on to decide that it's not worth spending time to document, update, repair, patch, anything because it's just a waste of time, not only will shit break, but it will take long enough for an replacement cog to come up to speed that they might as well close their doors and take a long vacation. I had the luxury of watching a crash and burn like this. The boss had too much ego involved to ask us to come back and dig him out. I helped one of my old coworkers out to lessen his pain a little, but waited until they had their going out of business sale before I actually want back. I still have my old office chair that I managed to pick up for about $15.
All arguments about the guy's maturity and professionalism aside, I've got to admit that 100 hours of community service isn't a bad price to pay for a "Fuck you!" prank like that. And I'll bet his only regret is not being able to see the reactions at the meeting.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
that's all
what if he was fired wrongfully? today's situation prevents any sort of justice from happening. if he was canned for politics then I have no sympathy for his employer whatsoever.
This guy would have been smarter if he had found another disgruntled employee and waited a while and then framed him. Or could it be that that is what happened, he could have been marked as an obvious target and someone smarter set him up! Whomever did the hacking it was still childish, the equivalent of keying someones car.
I don't own an IT company but I wouldn't want to work with this guy. Very childish. I can't wait until we finally see these clowns plant child porn or evidence of credit card fraud and other serious crime so they can prove what I have said for years about that subject and computer vulnerability. The first being that no content should be illegal no matter how vulgar it is aka 1st amendment (instead use it to track down people and make sure they aren't committing crimes and making content). Second computer systems are insecure and any lay person should discount any digital evidence taken from a persons personal devices (it's just too easy to frame people). Hacking in inherently unprovable unless you actively bug a persons house and computer and can show he manned the keyboard and can be video recorded tying the things they accused him of doing. I say this because even I would be smart enough to rig a persons computer to do things in the background while he was physically at the computer.
As far as law enforcement I am surprised that more people aren't up in arms over the fact that with a simple accusation the police can come in and permanently seize thousands of dollars of computer equipment and all your personal information and just maybe you'll get it back five years later when it's obsolete and only if you managed to actually prove your innocence (not found not guilty). Further they take can take all your backups so you have nothing to restore from. Then they will probably try to strong arm you with the lure of getting your property back. And this is all legal.
Or you can just do this...
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1140683&cid=26985821
At least he didn't stab the CEO like they do in India. If the CEO culture doesn't improve, it will come to that eventually in USA. Mark my words.
Every once in a while, I'll think about some crappy situation I was in while doing something really cool, like driving along the coast. That's when I know I got the best revenge.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
or it didnt happen.
We had a similar issue happen in my office once - not replacing a presentation with pornography, but instead, a recently terminated employee (who was misguidedly provided remote access at all) whose role involved managing calendars and appointments for a handful of executives and leaders, created fake, inappropriate appointments with officers and very high ups.
Leadership came down to our offices and asked why this person was allowed to do this after having been let go. Unfortunately, that was the first indication that they had been 'offboarded'. HR never communicated to us.
Whoops.
TFA makes it clear what happened: he didn't replace a presentation with porn on the way out, he actually used his old logins after the fact to control the computer during a presentation and bring up porn. So not exactly hacking, but also pretty clearly illegal.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Have gnu, will travel.
I think it would be more appropriate to compare him breaking into the company after hours and replacing the slides after he was fired.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
So what you're saying just because his boss is conservative it's okay?!
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
I'm just saying...let's us have a look at the pictures and judge him by that.
Reminds me of this short
politics as in corporate politics...
I love reading stories like this. This fucked in the head system we have that treats people like machines to throw away, would have more stories like this if we collectively grew a set of balls. I keep thinking of the stapler guy in Office Space when I read this story.
Here is a thought for the "omfg you are too old crowd" think of every picture you see of Einstein. He's not some young buck, he's a wild haired old geezer in every famous picture of him. Frankly you need a good mix for a good IT squad. Of course you need the wizkids, but you also need the salty old guys as well. Give them a multi-player game to play when they have down time to help them sort out their teamwork issues. That shouldn't be hard to do, considering you have to pry them out of a game most of the time. Just make sure their gaming is productive as a team.
Anyway, if they got rid of the old Chief, you would think he still has some indians around as well. That might make me nervous if I was the manager, and if I just pulled a dick move, and fired the head of a department and had done is too tactlessly that I ended up part of the collateral damage. That and if I wasn't at least a bit paranoid enough to sweep for crap like keyloggers or anything "off the reservation". That and who doesn't keep a close preview on what slides they are about to present? I know if I am presenting one, I will be tweaking it all the way there and probably some after I am done. Of course I am thinking most of the universe is on their laptop. /yawn
Get off my lawn!
Take the Red Pill.
pics or it didn't happen :)
Over any 5-year period, I hire an average of 1 to 3 IT professionals a month. The performance of each directly reflects on my ability to provide my clients with individuals whose judgement is sound, and who can accept that"at will" employment means they can be laid off at any time without a reason.
With this "little" lapse in judgement, I can assure you that he is not likely to get past HR and background checks, and even less likely to get past me.
If he left with drama elsewhere, he is probably a risk to leave with drama in a future job as well.
I want the best people I can find, and part of that is to figure out the extent to which each individual is likely to suppress personal and professional issues when it makes sense to do so.
I do my best to leave every client and employer on a positive note, regardless of what frustrating shortcomings on their part I discovered along the way.
If you can't do so, just hope you don't want your resume to be embraced by me or anyone in any company who thinks like me,
You don't have to agree with all of my positions on the issue. But if you can't disagree without being disagreeable, I really don't want you on my team.
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
same thing as always, plenty of wanking and dick waving.
You can't handle the truth.
If there's a weakness in the security, it should have been taken care off regardless. Sure, now they have to sweep the whole network for back doors the guy may have put in, but if they did their job properly in the first place, the guy wouldn't have been able to do this.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Next time slightly alter the presentation to make it look incompetent
For most PowerPoint presentations, that is accomplished without making any edit to the original.
Unfurtunately, most PHB's in the audience don't notice.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
It's not for presentations.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
It's come up in a few posts and now I'm curious enough that I have to ask. I've heard of Walmart but what sort of job is a "greeter" and how does that translate into English instead of Walmart corporate doubleplusgood doublethink?
I'm in a land where "gimp" is merely a graphics program or a guy in Pulp Fiction and a "pastie" is something you eat so I don't understand the American words sometimes.
If you want the best people you can find, why do you limit yourself to those who will accept "at will" employment terms?
He's 52. Even 40-somethings find it difficult to land a new job, regardless of how they left the previous one. Obviously, he isn't bothered about getting another job.
That's pretty much the industry standard. People still value pay/benefits over possibly job stability, aka contracts.
If employment isn't at will, it's difficult to fire them even with proof. Even if you pay off the rest of their contract and tell them to GTFO. I agree someone should have to have a good reason to fire you, but look how hard it is to fire people in government work.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
A fellow had just been hired as the new CEO of a large high tech corporation. The CEO who was stepping down met with him privately and presented him with three numbered envelopes. "Open these if you run up against a problem you don't think you can solve," he said.
Well, things went along pretty smoothly, but six months later, sales took a downturn and he was really catching a lot of heat. About at his wits's end, he remembered the envelopes. He went to his drawer and took out the first envelope. The message read, "Blame your predecessor."
The new CEO called a press conference and tactfully laid the blame at the feet of the previous CEO. Satisfied with his comments, the press -- and Wall Street -- responded positively, sales began to pick up and the problem was soon behind him.
About a year later, the company was again experiencing a slight dip in sales, combined with serious product problems. Having learned from his previous experience, the CEO quickly opened the second envelope. The message read, "Reorganize." This he did, and the company quickly rebounded.
After several consecutive profitable quarters, the company once again fell on difficult times. The CEO went to his office, closed the door and opened the third envelope.
The message said, "Prepare three envelopes."
....
But don't forget that that (your..) bad manager did his bad job a few more years, getting managing experience (in the most costly way), and will jump ship. Just make sure that your network is up to date on your side of the story, or they might try to bite you again from their grave.
Pictures, or it isn't true. TFA is worthless if not providing link to the presentation.
Invita Invidia
(1) Most people saying that it's "almost worth it" aren't really serious. If they were, this sort of case would be unexceptional. But it is exceptional. These sorts of events are relatively rare. So if you think the point of criminal punishment is deterence, any penalty at all will still deter most people.
(2) The deterence theory of punishment is largely discredited, at least in western style liberal democracies. Take the death penalty in the US as one example. There is quite a bit of good data that suggests that capital punishment does not act as a deterent. Yet, many (if not most) US citizens want to keep the death penalty legal and cheer when murders are put to death. Better theories are the retributive and restorative theories of punishment. The first seems crass to me, but there is good evidence to support it. The second is pretty interesting but one has to take a few metaphysical leaps to make sense out of it. For a good treatment see the section dealing with justice and punishment in John Finnis, ``Natural Law, Natural Right''
This is why I think the Lulzsec antics are just going to cause more problems. We already have enough problems with our geriatric members of Congress trying to pass restrictive tech laws to protect their Hollywood friends and their "digital property" and the last thing we need is the same folks writing laws making "hacking" (such a vague term now) a 10+ year in prison felony.
He not only got insignificant revenge, he was stupid too.
Any BOFH worth his salt:
1. Would delay any action for long enough to have plausible deny-ability
2, Would make changes slowly and subtly so they were not immediately obvious.
Examples:
A script that modfied all the percentages and total/subtotals in a spread sheet by a random small percentage.
Putting a bunch of errors in the financial report that was going tot he printers to be mailed out to everyone.
Replacing 1 file in a thousand with a copy from the backup system every week.
Once a month randomly overwrite some user's hard drive ideally making it look like a hardware failure.
Reconfiguring a few ports on the network switch to lock out a MAC address at random.
Auto emailing interesting files to the competition.
Scale this, starting with small things 6 weeks after you left, and gradually increasing so that the new IT department is scrambling to keep up.
You also have to do this in a way that is not obvious. You want systems where a machine inside the network establishes the connection, using a well known port so that it doesn't make much of a blip in network traffic analysis. And you actually want multiple such machines to avoid losing your access by a smart sysadmin. And it probably would help if you had a computer in a box that was attached to a spare cable and stuffed into the ceiling space.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
Poor APK.
What the heck, I have 5 minutes to waste, and he really does need his monthly kick in the head from me. He wants my attention so bad that he literally posts a hundred or more times, in the hope that I'll reply, so why not? After all, if he wants to troll himself so badly, who am I to stop it.
So, APK, please tell everyone how giving away GPL software that I wrote, on a site that has never carried any form of commercial advertising, makes me a greedy advertiser.
Maybe you can do a better job than you did when you failed in defending your precious hosts file crap.
Come on, stupid cyber-stalker. Tell everyone how everyone writing and giving away GPL software is greedy.
YHBT. YFI - Again!
Now you are convicted felon (probably, 2 years suspended), can no longer vote, and are almost certainly unemployable with the exception of the most menial of jobs. You are not some "l33t hacker," you basically did what any 14 year old computer savvy kid knows and can figure out. You have the maturity of a 14 year old as well, and it's probably what ended up getting you fired in the first place. So was it worth it?
In this day and age, there is no "wrongfully fired". The only reason given for firing is "no reason". You would have to go up against expensive company lawyers to try to prove that they DID have a reason for firing you AND that that reason was a bad one.
If you're female or a minority, you may have a case, but otherwise, even if you know they fired you because you refused to perform oral sex for the CEO, there is not much you can do about it.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.