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Student Used 'USB Killer' Device To Destroy $58,000 Worth of College Computers (theverge.com)
A former student of The College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, has pled guilty to charges that he destroyed tens of thousands of dollars worth of campus computers using a USB device designed to instantly overwhelm and fry their circuitry. The plea was announced today by the Department of Justice, FBI, and Albany Police Department. The Verge reports: Vishwanath Akuthota, the former student, now faces up to 10 years in prison (with up to three years of supervision after release) and a fine totaling up to $250,000. He was arrested and taken into custody in North Carolina on February 22nd, just over a week after he went on a spree of inserting the "USB Killer" device into 66 of Saint Rose's computers around various locations on campus. Such devices can be easily and freely purchased online and can overload the surge protection in many PCs.
Akuthota, 27, apparently made video recordings of himself inserting the malicious USB device into the computers and said "I'm going to kill this guy" as the PCs were overloaded and permanently ruined. So it's fair to say the FBI and APD had all the evidence they needed. In total, Akuthota caused $58,471 worth of damage. As part of his guilty plea, he has agreed to pay back that amount to the college, a small private school in New York's capital city. The Verge reached out to The College of Saint Rose for a statement on today's news, but a spokesperson said the college had been asked by law enforcement to refrain from commenting.
Akuthota, 27, apparently made video recordings of himself inserting the malicious USB device into the computers and said "I'm going to kill this guy" as the PCs were overloaded and permanently ruined. So it's fair to say the FBI and APD had all the evidence they needed. In total, Akuthota caused $58,471 worth of damage. As part of his guilty plea, he has agreed to pay back that amount to the college, a small private school in New York's capital city. The Verge reached out to The College of Saint Rose for a statement on today's news, but a spokesperson said the college had been asked by law enforcement to refrain from commenting.
If you're going to do something stupid or better yet illegal, don't record yourself.
Here's a fun Q&A with him on FB: https://www.facebook.com/saint...
Sounds like he got fired and was looking for revenge! Curious what he did to deserve the firing.
Akuthota is a citizen of India who is in the US on a visa
He could have attempted to write a legitimate application, such as a "Hello, World", and unleashed the unintended bugs on their entire network of PCs.
And shows how fucked up the US "justice" system is. Average sentence for murder is something like seven years. He should be given a psych evaluation and made to pay restitution via wage garnishment in the future.
So he snapped after realizing the U.S. economy is still a shithole? Stereotypical stern family giving him grief for not getting an MD? Seriously pissed off at Uni's support staff?
There are so many reasons one would go out of their way to toast 66 campus PCs, yet this article fails to explain even an iota of the guilty party's reasoning or motive. The author does take time to greet his alma mater in the text of the article, however.
such as installing Windows 10 on them.
Table-ized A.I.
Or play the long game... land a job with them, produce shit code for years requiring hiring of others to fix said code, milking them of hundreds or thousands of dollars, producing nothing useful over a period of years.
You something felonious and videotape yourself doing it, and then release that video or allow it to come in possession of the police? 10 years is excessive, but he's a complete dumbshit. It's also surprising this hasn't happened more, and I'm sure it will now that the government has given it national publicity.
Akuthota, 27, apparently made video recordings of himself
I'd say it's not enough, but I don't think it's constitutional to single out retarded people to levy harsher punishments.
In my day, ports had fuses so the worst you'd do is fry a single port, or possibly pair (gang?) of ports.
In the 90s when USB started becoming popular, shitty products that caused shorts and fried USB ports were so common that various types of protections on the ports was a well-advertised feature of motherboards. Enough to get a broken Chinglish call out on the features panel on the back of the box or on the inside flap.
For a lot of the people doing stuff like this, if they can't brag about the crime, there's no point doing it. It's not really anarchy or revenge that they seek. They're attention whores. They thrive on the publicity and praise/criticism they get. For them, pulling a stunt like this without recording it (and distributing the recording) is like the proverbial tree that falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear. In their minds, it's indistinguishable from the tree never falling / them never having committed the crime.
Wow! He destroyed one Mac!
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
his degree fast enough before VISA expiration so he wanted to pick a easy monetizable immature crime that would put him in a nice monastic temple environment for a long time. Hell when i was in jail i ascended the ranks of janitorial and sewing machine repairing tasks for example. in 10 years he would have Statute of limitations to remove the college damages bill. Online university acccreditation is clearly the way to go.
that does not really damage the hardware to the point of junking it.
How much damage could of been done with etherkiller?
http://www.fiftythree.org/ethe...
Are you not counting every time it reboots or installs update while im still using it? Might as well be useless.
Hahaha appl fanboi is fanning out or (naturally) just dumb. So many controls to make sure it doesn't bother you (enabled by default) but 0 used
If you have the Home version of Windows 10, then you cannot permanently postpone updates. Eventually it WILL update and interrupt whatever you're doing.
For once, an MBA has to actually pay for the damage himself.
Thung-thied
Now he will get to stay in the USA getting free room, board and medical care.
So, that means 4 Macbooks?
He didn't get 10 years.
The article, like most, quotes the maximum anyone could ever get for violating a particular statute. Rarely does anyone get the maximum. The judge takes into account exactly what the person did, their record, etc. In most cases, the penalty is actually negotiated with the defendant via their attorney.
The crime he was charged with would be something like "intentionally destroying property greater than $10,000". That covers taking a baseball bat to your ex-boyfriend's car, destroying the school computers, intentionally driving a bulldozer through someone's house, and lots of other ways of destroying lots of things. The WORST possible cases of "intentionally destroying property valued *over* $10,000" could get 10 years, if the defendant told the judge "fuck you, I'll do it again when I get out".
You can reduce the judge's descretion by enacting a specific law against "destroying a schools computers" and another law against "destroying your neighbor's car" ans another against "destroying the judge's house", but I think we have enough laws already.
Unless you personally use it 24/7 with no breaks, you can schedule that update and reboot for later that night, when you're asleep.
Grammar, you know?
The vast majority of PC motherboards is immune to this kind of device. The ones you can reliably kill are Macs (check YouTube, there are plenty of videos of hardware engineers explaining why Mac boards are designed by morons).
Many years ago I worked for a technical institute. Got an urgent call "the computers where exploding"
Some little turd of an individual had switched all the machines off then set the power supplies to 110v (in a 220v country)
So the next person to turn the machine on got a loud bang and smoke...
Many machines where destroyed. Many courses had to be cancelled.
People like this need locked up, forever.
A 15 inch MacBook Pro with maxed out hardware comes out to $6,649.
$58,471 would buy you 8 MacBook Pros.
US prison has free healthcare fmc Rochester has mayo clinic
Double faggot alert!
So the cops allegedly had all this damning evidence against this guy. Should be pretty easy to get a real conviction from a jury of his peers, right? Yet nevertheless the unamerican nazis on the kangaroo kourt coerced him into "confessing".
Take your meds.
How's the weather in Kiev today, Sasha?
You get what you pay for. "Free" healthcare means they hit you with tranquilizers, pain killers, etc until you stop complainin'. Doesn't mean they actually take care of you. You're in prison, wuddya expect?
So, I have to leave my computer switched on for the entire night for Microsoft's convenience? Also, I might not want to install that particular update, what now?
My computer exists only to serve me and obey only me. End of story.
What is best in life? Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper.
"My computer exists only to serve me and obey only me. End of story."
Exact same sentiment that Microsoft has for their OS.
No ... when you log off if gives you an option to install updates. My windows 10 laptop will even wake itself up from sleep during the night and install updates.
Another non-white parasite, desperate to ruin white countries. Thanks, Jews! I'm sure we'll forgive you!
The manufacturers CxOs should all get life!
US prison has free healthcare fmc Rochester has mayo clinic
I can guarantee you it ain't free.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Sentencing in this country is bananas
I have to admit, I laughed pretty hard the first time I saw the picture of the etherkiller. (Several people have made similar cables, usually much less hacky looking, e.g. with matching colored cables.)
I always wondered if some poor bastard ever unwittingly plugged in one of these things that some malicious person left lying around and if so, what happened (and if anyone was ever charged.)
It's possible the cops / feds could have secured a conviction based on other evidence, but making video recordings of the criminal act is the sheer height of stupidity. I'd love to know why he was a "former student" but he's clearly not the sharpest tool in the drawer.
$50000 in insurance claim.
It's a beautiful thing when criminal and victim join hands to defraud the insurance company and and the lawyers get their cut.
> This is why immigration reform is needed. Psychopaths like this one
If you think about it objectively, a white-anglo-saxon-protestant guy in the same situation and mental state would have probably purchased a 30-rounder and walked around the campus wolfeinsteining any people on sight. This hindi guy just culled some beige boxes and neither humans nor cows were hurt. That's a much better outcome in my opinion.
Honest question, Iâ(TM)m not american: is this seen as an unexpected good bonus? I honestly assumed they would get free healtcare since they cant go out and see a doctor or pay for it.
Funny thing, with the hacking laws he mightâ(TM)ve gotten MORE time in jails than simply wrecking the computers. Aaron swartz was going away for 35 years for download some science articles. Think about that, its insanity.
Tangential to the subject of the article....look at all the consumers of the news who posted "omg 10 years in prison!" whose naivete allowed them to (somewhat) read the article, believe the idea that he's going to get 10 years (not understanding the hyperbole common to news reporting), and be outraged.
Think of these naive and gullible news consumers next time you read about people being outraged (particularly non Americans commenting on American news) and how easily their feelings are accidentally or deliberately incited.
-Styopa
"Question 1: Are you a psychopath ?"
"Yes"
"Sorry, application denied".
Maybe your magical foolproof filter can be applied to firearms licenses too ?
Yea - this is the situation. You have to believe in the judges to be fair (that's their job). The real sentence will probably be something like:
- Pay for everything you broke, at the approximate present value of breaking it. +20%, because court costs or whatever.
- X hours community service (work with the school to figure out how many weekends you get to work for them during the next 3 years, or homeless shelter or whatever)
- 5 years probation (you do something like this again, and you're fucked)
And the fuckers on Wall Street got a slap on the wrist. Nice morals in your stupid laws...
Vishwanath Akuthota, the former student
Well I would certainly hope he's "former."
I fail to understand why this is newsworthy. Next we will see an article about how you can buy hammers nearly anywhere and they can be used to do massive damage to cars, PCs, laptops, monitors, cell phones with no training at all!
wow, another anti-Microsoft circlejerk on Slashdot, how clever and original!
So what's the big deal? The amount of damage is probably about half the cost of a year's attendance. No biggie. Daddy will pay it.
Sure. That's because of the problem that their security was so lax that the guy had physical access to so many machines. If the college had government-funding for some research, this would constitute gross negligence on its part, so the college would be in as much trouble as this guy.
in 10 years he would have Statute of limitations to remove the college damages bill.
Except he made the news, so anyone searching for his name online can find the news articles.
I remember some other case mentioned here a few years ago, where two wall street traders, or investors (not sure) were convicted of some type of financial fraud.
After the statute of limitations, they tried to get Google to delete all mention of them, but Google refused.
As their crime had also made the news back then, it came down to them essentially being part of history for it.
Privacy begins with
$2-3 copay fed
TX $100/year MAX some situations are free and you get it even if you have no funds.
It's a joke, relax Satya.
Table-ized A.I.
Yes, you get free health care.
Not always good care.
Last time I was at the eye doctor there was a prisoner in handcuffs and belly chain sitting at the refractometer with a cop standing next to him. Nurse said they get 2-3 a week from the local jail.
For the large prisons a lot of the medical needs [like glasses] are cared for inside the walls - I knew an internist and a psychiatrist that had offices inside the walls of San Quinton in California.
There are some cases of people committing crimes in order to get healthcare.
I didn't mean for the prisoner. It is probably even getting charged to the prison at a premium price because that bill is just handed over to the taxpayer. It ain't free, at all. It is strange though that prisoners seem to get better basic health care than the general public.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
So yea and he made it to college! Go our education system..
It's not like we're talking Stanford, University of Illinois, or MIT here. We're talking about a small college no one has heard of in Albany, NY. It may be a fine school, but probably not overwhelmed by applicants given its relatively unkown status.
It should also be noted that he hasn't actually graduated from said college, merely attended. Plenty of washouts attend college but never finish.
So this is hardly an indictment of our entire educational system. Maybe an indictment of the College of Saint Rose's admissions process, but even that's in question. For all we know this moron isn't a moron, has tested well on his SATs, had decent grades in high school, but has the emotional intelligence of a 3-year old. Most admissions processes will probably fail to identify the latter, particularly if the candidate is a good test taker and bullshits well in essays.
Actual damages are 66 USB chips worth about $0.25 each.
They can be replaced in about 15 minutes by a qualified solder technician making about $25/hr.
Probably 3 days of work total at $200 each for labor.
Total actual damages $616.50.
If found guilty, on top of remuneration to the school they should make him pay back all of the aid given to him in the US and then since he is here on a student visa, kick his dumb ass out of the US.
Former Indian Student Arrested for Intentionally Causing Damage to Protected Computers Owned by Local College
Give him a year and a 25 million fine. Give the manufacturer 10 years and 250 million fine.
I hope they accounted for all the damage that he did. He didn't just destroy some computers that have to be replaced, he's wasting a lot of people's time buying and setting up replacement computers, and may have destroyed work that was stored on the computers. And anybody that does something so randomly destructive needs to be punished in order to discourage future random destruction by others.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
All world we live in , where raking some stuff is reacted to more seriously then physically assaulting a person. The world's full of stuff. Stuff comes and goes. Not a big deal.
Honestly, prison seems excessive for most any property crime. Restitution with penalties and interest, an ankle monitor, and a few years of weekends picking up trash seems good. Throw in a jumpsuit that says I'm the jackass that burned out the computers fr fun. If he doesn't seem genuinely repentant, make him wear donkey ears while he picks up the trash.
Restitution should be having to pay for the replacement systems and personally rebuilding and configuring each one of them.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
To use in training sessions at clients as to the danger of "found" USB keys. I figure bringing in a "trash" obsolete PC that needs to go to recycling anyway and frying it in front of a group of office staff may make an impression, particularly if I manage a model that smokes nicely.
fencepost
just a little off
Wouldn't it be easy to put a rectifier or resistor on the board at the USB port to mitigate such attacks? Obviously I'm not a hardware engineer, just wondering...
You can reduce the judge's descretion by enacting a specific law against "destroying a schools computers" and another law against "destroying your neighbor's car" ans another against "destroying the judge's house", but I think we have enough laws already.
This doesn't solve the real problem anyway: how do you reduce the discretion of the one who is limiting the judge's discretion by passing these laws?
Bottom line: define what is "just" in this situation. That is, what is the just penalty for this crime and who decides and how do we verify that that person's decision is correct?
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Sooner or later you just have to trust the ones who make the decisions and give them power to make those decisions.
$2-3 copay fed TX $100/year MAX some situations are free and you get it even if you have no funds.
Liberal? You do understand the previous poster was trying to point out the fact that someone is paying for it, right? Nothing is free, someone has to pay, in the end...
Honest question, Iâ(TM)m not american: is this seen as an unexpected good bonus? I honestly assumed they would get free healtcare since they cant go out and see a doctor or pay for it.
If you want to be honest, please call it Taxpayer funded healthcare. "Free" is a lie..
Hindus don't actually consider cows to be gods, but they do consider them to be the divine examplar of motherly devotion, so grinding up a cow and eating it, to them, would be like what grinding up a puppy and eating it would be to us.
When I was in India, I noticed that chain restaurants that in the US would serve hamburger served the same thing with lamb patties.
...actually pretty good. I think it was an improvement.
I'll have to point out that I've also worked with some very very good Indian researchers. There are both good and bad students coming out of India.
(much the same as in America).
While I am sure you're right, and he certainly deserves some sort of punishment, does up to 10 years in prison (with up to three years of supervision after release) and a fine totaling up to $250,000 sound like proportional punishment to you?...
Honestly, prison seems excessive for most any property crime.
You did read that the penalty is "up to" ten years in prison. News stories always mention the maximum sentence for a crime, but first-time offenders with no aggravating factors never get sentenced to the maximum, and defendants that cooperate (by pleading guilty) always get a reduced sentence.
My bet is that he gets sentenced to time served and a fine... and deportation.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
A hammer is just the same. Not news worthy, just an idiot. Better on CNN