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Job Seeking Hacker Gets 30 Months In Prison
wiredmikey writes "A hacker who tried to land an IT job at Marriott by hacking into the company's computer systems, and then unwisely extorting the company into hiring him, has been sentenced to 30 months in prison. The hacker started his malicious quest to land a job at Marriott by sending an email to Marriott containing documents taken after hacking into Marriott servers to prove his claim. He then threatened to reveal confidential information he obtained if Marriott did not give him a job in the company's IT department. He was granted a job interview, but little did he know, Marriott worked with the U.S. Secret Service to create a fictitious Marriott employee for use by the Secret Service in an undercover operation to communicate with the hacker. He then was flown in for a face-to-face 'interview' where he admitted more and shared details of how he hacked in. He was then arrested and he pleaded guilty back in November 2011. Marriott claims the incident cost the company between $400,000 and $1 million in salaries, consultant expenses and other costs."
Attila Nemeth, a 26 year-old Hungarian citizen
Atilla the Hun
You mean kinda like holding information hostage and not allowing access to normal content during the SOPA protests last month?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
But doesn't "information want to be free"?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If you were the IT guy at my company, I would complain to the CTO until I got an exception to your restriction. I don't care about your petty concerns when they get in the way of doing my job. Neither does anyone else.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
And its people like you who cause the kind of issues that these restrictions are designed to prevent.
And it's people like you who spend so much goddamn time worrying about little "issues", that if given the power to do so by the company management, you'd drag the entire business down from accomplishing its actual goals all in the name of preventing these "issues."
Why do you need to transfer executables via email? And if you do have a good reason to require this, are they from random people or are they from a select group? Can you do it via other channels which allow IT to vet the files for malicious content?
And when you introduce bureaucracy into every goddamn file copy operation, and require justification and paperwork for every stupid special situation that comes up, what kind of parasitic overhead does this introduce to the business as a whole?
Seriously, if a restriction is in place, don't go acting like a 3 year old with a hissy fit, act like a grown adult and put your case in as to why you require circumvention of the security policies. If your reasons are valid then IT will work with you, if they are just childish "I don't like your restrictions and going to bitch about it till I get my way" reasons then they will tell you no.
In other words, I.T. technicians play all the same political bullshit games that every other group does, while of course, usually also being the ones who cry loudest about what whatever those assholes over in H.R., management, etc are doing. (The victim mentality is popular here, due to the overabundance of beta-male types.) Your attitude is: "If you are kind to me and can eloquently explain your 'need', then I MAY be so kind as to grant you your humble request.....OR if you don't treat me with the respect I feel I *deserve*, I will make your life hell." This petty clannish behavior does nothing more than make you an obstacle, not a solution finder or problem solver. How does it feel to be directly dragging down the company bottom line?
I.T. is a liability, NOT an asset; always remember that. The real assets are a) the knowledgeable and skilled people directly involved in the company's main business, b) the capital i.e. the computer systems you are hired to maintain. Well, the computer is only valuable as long as it's facilitating the operator in accomplishing his job. Who cares how virus-free or clean and well maintained the computer is, if it adds 30% onto the company's labor overhead due to the silly restrictions and arbitrary bullshit the I.T. department has dreamed up? How big of a problem is a virus infestation compared to developers quitting in disgust due to your unwarranted and heavy handed intrusion upon their dignity and job description?
This is exactly why smart CEOs and executives keep their I.T. departments (just like the engineers and other special interest groups) on a leash and don't let them dictate these type of decisions.
You job description, in a sane organization, is "fix computers." Your job is to come up with solutions to computer and network problems. People are trying to email .EXEs and other behaviors you find reprehensible? You don't say. Well maybe that's because there's some kind of *need* they are trying to fulfill, a problem they are trying to solve. You might even discover that, shock and horror, these people aren't even able to articulate to you exactly the nature of what that need is, but they know it exists and it's not going away just because you "don't see any logical reason" why that need should exist. So you don't come up with any kind of real solution at all and just hand-wave it away, acting more as a roadblock than anything, a stick in the spokes of those people whose jobs directly contribute to the company's bottom line.
And you wonder why I.T. tends to be so universally hated in the corporate world?