Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Man To Pay $300,000 In Damages For Hacking Employer (bbc.com)

Posted by msmash on from the guilty-as-charged dept.

An anonymous reader writes: A former private security officer in California must pay nearly $319,000 in damages for attacking his employer's computer systems. Yovan Garcia accessed payroll records at Security Specialists, which provides private security patrols, to inflate the number of hours he had worked. He later hacked the firm's servers to steal data and defaced its website. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald said Garcia had used the stolen data to help set up a rival business. Security Specialists first noticed issues with Mr Garcia's pay records in July 2014, about two years after he joined. In one example, they showed he had worked 12 hours per day over a two-week period and was owed 40 hours of overtime pay, when in fact he only worked eight hours per day.

9 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. When I was a kid... by HornWumpus · · Score: 2

    When I was a kid those of us that worked at 'Worlds of Fun' (an amusement park in Kansas City) discovered that their computerized payroll was STUPID.

    We never clocked out and got paid for 24 hours/day, 7 days/week. Some on the night grounds crew slept under the bridges, others and the day crew bought themselves season passes to exit and enter as customers (you couldn't get out the employee route without clocking out). Good times.

    Eventually they figured it out (it wasn't still going on 3 years later, when my younger brother worked there), but there were no consequences. Even though it had to be easy to find with a computerized report.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    1. Re:When I was a kid... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I had a CS Prof that told a story about the early mainframe days at my Uni. When he was a student, they used to give free computer time as rewards for bug reports. He and friends found that the payroll system had no security. Any mainframe user could alter records. So they reported the problem. A week later nothing changed, so they reported it again. Later, still no change.

      So they wrote themselves each a check for -1,000,000 USD.

      They were all called in the next day to explain how the payroll made nearly three million dollars.

    2. Re:When I was a kid... by HornWumpus · · Score: 2

      At the time, owned by the Hunt brothers. Same scumbags who lost most of their inherited money trying to corner the silver market, now only millionaires. Fuck em. Yes, I'm proud of every penny I took off them.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    3. Re:When I was a kid... by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 4, Funny

      That reminds me of the time I read a comment on an online forum about someone who had a CS Prof that told him a story about the early mainframe days at his university. When he was a student, they gave free computer time as a reward for filing bug reports.

      Him and his friends found that the payroll system had no security whatsoever and that any user could alter the records. So they reported the problem but a week later nothing changed, so they reported it again. Later, still no change.

      So they wrote themselves each a check for minus one million dollars. They were all called in the next day to explain how the payroll system made nearly three million dollars.

      And then when he posted that story online, some jerk told him that most of those stories are complete bullshit.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
  2. Re:What could possibly go wrong? by HornWumpus · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you're hourly, always keep a copy of your hours. Most bosses _will_ try to fuck you on hours, they won't do it on every check. You must continually spot check.

    It's really amazing, how their 'errors' always go one way.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  3. Re:Not a good hacker... by HornWumpus · · Score: 2

    If he had half a brain, he would have just increased his hourly rate.

    Management sometimes looks at overtime totals.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  4. Re:What could possibly go wrong? by Pascoea · · Score: 2

    Most bosses _will_ try to fuck you on hours

    Most? You must have had a hard work upbringing. Granted yes, you are right, SOME bosses will screw you. Saying MOST will is a little unfair. The only examples I can think of where people claimed "their bosses were fucking them" was the people that tried to game the quarter-hour rounding rules on time clocks. They'd clock in 8 minutes past the hour, or clock out 8 minutes before quitting time and lose the full 15 minutes, then bitch because "they got fucked out of 15 minutes pay".

  5. Re:The password was joshua by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

    A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

    Would you like to play a nice game of chess?

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  6. Re:Not a good hacker... by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A better way would be to send all the rounding errors of the payment system into a separate account. Nobody's going to miss fractions of a cent.

    --
    #DeleteFacebook