Church Elder/'Jeopardy' Champion Charged With Computer Crimes (mlive.com)

Stephanie Jass, a record-setting, seven-time winner on Jeopardy, has been charged with two felonies for accessing the email accounts of two executives at the college where she worked as an assistant professor. An anonymous reader quotes MLive: Jass was able to access the accounts because of an April 24 issue with the college email system, hosted by Google. Frank Hribar, vice president for enrollment and student affairs, said there was network outage caused by loss of power. On April 25, users received a text message with a generic, standard passcode: "Please attempt to login to Gmail using this password. You should be prompted to change password after login..." Not everyone, however, was prompted to do so. Some did make the change using a tutorial. Some received an error and were unable to create a new password, the timeline states. Others did not alter the password at all. The method "worked just fine, had there not been manipulation of the system," said Hribar...

Jass, 47, of Tecumseh was charged in December with unauthorized access to a computer, program or network, and using a computer to commit a crime, both felonies... On May 5, the college deactivated Jass' email account and access to all other college software. The locks to her office door were changed and her desktop computer was confiscated, according to the timeline.
The police report "indicates Jass accessed emails while using an internet network at First Presbyterian Church of Tecumseh, where she served as an elder."

Comments

power loss = reset passwords ????

[Joe_Dragon]

power loss = reset passwords ????

Re:power loss = reset passwords ????

[Anonymous Coward]

Well look at the statement made after filling in the implied subject nouns left out:

The method to prevent manipulation of the system worked just fine, had there not been manipulation of the system, said Hribar...

With such logic, it doesn't surprise me a bit that a power loss results in reset passwords.
They probably print out all the students SSNs on papers that are put up on the walls for all to see every time it rains too, because why not?

Re:power loss = reset passwords ????

[PhunkySchtuff]

power loss = reset passwords ????

Even more to the point, power loss at a local facility = reset passwords for gmail ???

Re:power loss = reset passwords ????

[toadlife]

They probably use federation to log into their gmail accounts; something like Shibboleth or ADFS or CAS. When the power went down, their federation server went down with it, which locked everyone out of their email accounts. At my work we use Office 365 and ADFS to do federated logins. We've generally don't have extended outages, so this hasn't been a problem, but some schools with more flaky architecture have elected to place backups of their AD domain/LDAP/SAML infrastructure in the cloud to prevent these types of outages.

Re:power loss = reset passwords ????

[Antique Geekmeister]

I've encountered this in environments claiming PCI, HIPAA, and FIRPAA compliance. The IT person asked to clear up lost passwords, en masse, is specifically told by their manager to send clear text one-time passwords, and may be told not to expire them, and is even told by their manager to use the same password for all one-time users. Objections are overridden as "wasting people'e time" and "interfering with the business". The result is that there may be dozens of accounts in even a small business where low-use email accounts are accessible for forged access for indefinite periods.

motive

[Anonymous Coward]

The shitty summary doesn't even mention motive.

Non story.

Captcha: grassy

Clickbait headline

[mark-t]

The fact that this person was a former Jeopardy champion, or the fact that she may have been recognized as an elder of some church is entirely irrelevant except insomuch as it might make some people who wouldn't otherwise give two shits about what this person did to instead click on the link to read about it.

Re:Clickbait headline

[Anonymous Coward]

"School employee accesses colleagues' emails without permission" doesn't sound as good.

Re:Clickbait headline

[arth1]

Christianity is still incredibly popular, so most people know what a church elder is and does.

And, as they all know, church elders are chosen by their community, in part, because of their solid moral values.

Um, no, I bet most people do not know this. Most christian varieties don't have elders, and while they may have heard the word, would have no way of knowing whether they were elected, appointed, graduated to being one, or just got old.

Don't presume that everybody else lives in your tiny world.

Re:Church elder, 'eh?

[OzPeter]

Whatever happened to 'Thou Shalt Not take advantage of they neighbor's inept security practices'?

I'll take hypocrisy for $1000 Alex!

Bad move.

[Gravis Zero]

From TFA:

Jass admitted to school authorities to accessing the emails of Docking, Caldwell, Assistant Vice President Bridgette Winslow, several unnamed fellow faculty members and students, including her stepson. She made these acknowledgements May 8 in a meeting with Human Resources Director Renee Burck; Vice President of Business Affairs Jerry Wright; and Patrick Quinlan, president of the faculty union, according to a timeline put together by the college and contained in the police report.

If I've learned anything about crime from corporations, it's that you should deny everything until the end of time and frustrate the prosecution endlessly until they are willing to let you go with a slap on the wrist but without admitting guilt.

Re:Bad move.

[thomst]

Gravis Zero noted:

From TFA:

Jass admitted to school authorities to accessing the emails of Docking, Caldwell, Assistant Vice President Bridgette Winslow, several unnamed fellow faculty members and students, including her stepson. She made these acknowledgements May 8 in a meeting with Human Resources Director Renee Burck; Vice President of Business Affairs Jerry Wright; and Patrick Quinlan, president of the faculty union, according to a timeline put together by the college and contained in the police report.

If I've learned anything about crime from corporations, it's that you should deny everything until the end of time and frustrate the prosecution endlessly until they are willing to let you go with a slap on the wrist but without admitting guilt.

It's worth noting that being a former Jeopardy! champion doesn't mean you're immune from acting foolishly.

There's a reason why Gary Gygax made Intelligence and Wisdom separate character traits, even way back when the D&D ruleset consisted of three stapled pamphlets in a white box ...

Re: Church elder, 'eh?

[The New Guy 2.0]

I haven't found a good church since I left Mt. Zion of Atlanta... most churches I've encountered are about getting power for the speaker, regardless of law or court decisions.

Re:What a waste of fine pussy.

[arth1]

Jass is a very attractive lady, I was very interested in dating her.

I guess beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, but c'mon:
https://peopledotcom.files.wor...

also...

[buddyglass]

She plays Learned League, and is a damn sight better at it than I am.