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Former Cal State Student Gets Year In Prison For Rigging Campus Election

Posted by timothy on from the do-son-of-sam-laws-apply-after-that? dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from ABC News: "A former student was sentenced to a year in prison for rigging his school elections at California State University-San Marcos so he could become student president, court documents show. Matthew Weaver, 22, was charged in January with wire fraud, access device fraud and unauthorized access to a computer. He pleaded guilty in March, admitting that he had stolen the email passwords of more than 740 students and used them to vote for himself 630 times during the student elections in March 2012... Right before the voting ended, on March 15, 2012, officials noticed 259 votes coming from another IP address. Officials tracked the IP address to a classroom, and found Weaver sitting there. There was only one other student in the lab, according to court documents. A university police officer arrested Weaver and seized his bag, subsequently discovering that he had stashed the keyloggers there."

21 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Dupe:

    http://it.slashdot.org/story/13/07/17/1455204/former-student-gets-year-in-prison-for-college-president-election-fraud

    1. Re:What? by sourceholder · · Score: 5, Funny

      Apparently he rigged the /. submission system as well.

    2. Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Dupe, dupe, dupe,
      Dupe of URL
      Dupe, dupe,
      Dupe of URL
      Yes, oh, I, I'm gonna link you
      Nothing can stop me now
      'Cause I'm the Dupe of URL...

    3. Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Maybe that's what the other guy did. #paranoid #slashdothatestwitterhashtags

  2. If he had only learned from the Simpsons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Really. All this work for a lousy student government election which in the real world means absolutely nothing!?!

    He should have remembered that episode of the Simpsons where Bart runs for class president and loses.

    Homer: Bart, does the class president get paid?
    Bart: No.
    Homer: Does he have to do extra work?
    Bart: Yes.
    Homer: And is this Martin Prince going to get to do anything neat, like throw out the first ball at the World Series?
    Bart: Hell no!
    Homer: So let the baby have his bottle! That is what I always tell myself.
    Bart: Thanks, Dad.

    1. Re:If he had only learned from the Simpsons by dj245 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Really. All this work for a lousy student government election which in the real world means absolutely nothing!?!

      He should have remembered that episode of the Simpsons where Bart runs for class president and loses.

      Homer: Bart, does the class president get paid? Bart: No.

      This position had a large stipend attached. $8000 is a lot for a student. I don't know why the summaries never mention this. I guess it makes for more controversy when it is fraud for something rather meaningless rather than plain old fraud for cash.

      --
      Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
    2. Re:If he had only learned from the Simpsons by ebusinessmedia1 · · Score: 2

      And still no senior bankers in jail.

    3. Re:If he had only learned from the Simpsons by causality · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And still no senior bankers in jail.

      They own the jail. And the courts. And the legislature. And if you want to run for office you take their money and probably not directly from their hands.

      So no, none of them in jail.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    4. Re:If he had only learned from the Simpsons by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 4, Informative

      China owns about 8% of the US debt.

      US debt is about 80% owned by the US.

  3. & people wonder by toby · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Why it is a social problem that there is no accountability whatsoever for the crimes and deceptions and election rigging of the rich, famous, well-connected, political dynasties and the One Party.

    --
    you had me at #!
  4. College student governments actually do have power by voss · · Score: 2

    As an example a state university in florida will have 20-30000 students and a student government budget in the millions. A budget bigger than some small cities.

  5. I'm more surprised... by Zargg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    there were officials sitting and watching the electronic tally in real time, with the IP addresses attached even, and they were able to spot it and track the IP to the physical location and get there before he was done. Am I the only one surprised at the level of security for a student election? I guess it has been a problem before, since they had this whole system set up for this...

    1. Re: I'm more surprised... by mysidia · · Score: 2

      What, like this?

    2. Re:I'm more surprised... by mysidia · · Score: 2

      there were officials sitting and watching the electronic tally in real time, with the IP addresses attached even, and they were able to spot it and track the IP to the physical location and get there before he was done.

      Sometimes IT admins have little better to do, and they understand about students abusing resources... they may have been watching for security reasons and noticed something anomolous; suddenly a massive amount of activity from one IP that just happened to be an on-campus IP.

      The cl00bie trying to rig the election; apparently never heard of using something like Tor, VPN, or open proxy services.

      There are probably plenty of California-based services they could have used to distribute traffic over multiple IPs; which would have made it less obvious -- or at least make the identity of the bad actor unobvious.

      What's sad is the guy probably ruined his entire future career over some stupid shit.... what employer will want to hire the college guy who committed a felony in college?

      Folks, please leave the hacking and other crimes to the expert script kiddies who live in Russia and China, where they are able to pursue those activities with impunity ---- those jobs are not for Americans; you're supposed to be honest, and work normal jobs -- like teacher or lawyer.

  6. Re:College student governments actually do have po by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    As an example a state university in florida will have 20-30000 students and a student government budget in the millions. A budget bigger than some small cities.

    Holy fuck, that's a huge variance! I wish I was one of the twenty, though. Unless there were only twenty because global warming flooded Florida.

    [I know he meant 20k-30k]

  7. Not allowed on kids stuff: by MobSwatter · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You can only rig real politics and get away with it.

  8. so.... by wbr1 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Aaron Swartz hacks for the dissemination of information. Gets browbeaten and threatned with so much time he kills himself.

    This guy hack for only his own good and gets a year. Nice to know where our prosecutors priorities are.

    --
    Silence is a state of mime.
    1. Re:so.... by mysidia · · Score: 2

      Aaron Swartz hacks for the dissemination of information. Gets browbeaten and threatned with so much time he kills himself. This guy hack for only his own good and gets a year. Nice to know where our prosecutors priorities are.

      Wait... Aaron Swartz didn't hack at all. He had privileges (JSTOR account) that allowed him to access the information he did; his crime was an "abuse" in the form of "overuse"; as in, he downloaded a "large number of articles"; instead of a small number of articles he was intended to be downloading.

      No doubt he was prosecuted based on a corporate agenda of controlling information. There was no corporate hand, or 'billions$ in intellectual property at stake' in the California case, though

    2. Re:so.... by LF11 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The particular prosecutor in Aaron Swartz's case (Carmen Ortiz) is a real problem child. She's the one who tried to steal Rus Caswell's motel here in Massachusetts under drug laws even though he was completely innocent of any crime. There are a few sordid items from her career.

    3. Re:so.... by b4upoo · · Score: 2

      Although the tactics used were unreasonable the individual remains the one who decided to commit suicide. There is usually no way to know if you are dealing with a person whose grasp of life is positive. When people are depressed they can kill themselves over the slightest, momentary, occurrence. We will never know how the charges and trial would have played out.

    4. Re:so.... by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 2

      I'm afraid that Aaron did "hack". MIT apparently started requiring logins for JSTOR access when the amount of downloaded material started interfering with JSTOR's servers, and Aaron snuck past the logins and the MAC address logging that was attempted to throttle the traffic. It's not deeply sophisticated hacking, but it's certainly applying computer insights to allow access that has been denied and to evade detection.