Cyber-criminal Left In Charge of Prison Computer Network 389
samzenpus writes "A 27-year-old man serving six years for stealing £6.5million using forged credit cards over the internet was recruited to help write code needed for the installation of an internal prison TV station. He was left unguarded with unfettered access to the system and produced results that anyone but prison officials could have guessed. He installed a series of passwords on all the machines, shutting down the entire prison computer system. A prison source said, 'It's unbelievable that a criminal convicted of cyber-crime was allowed uncontrolled access to the hard drive. He set up such an elaborate array of passwords it took a specialist company to get it working.'"
ehh (Score:2, Interesting)
Now contrast that with... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm. (Score:1, Interesting)
It makes me feel better actually. I hate to think that we have ridiculous laws that can wind a person up in prison for something as silly as growing a plant for his own use.... so its good to know that its not a total hell hole. Given that simple drug possession is one of the most common reasons for being behind bars.... this seems wholly appropriate.
Until they fix the reasons that people go there, I can't support anything that makes being in there unpleasant.
-Steve
Re:Hmmm. (Score:3, Interesting)
So, in other words - until you agree with all the laws that land you in jail, you don't think jail should be punitive in any way? Just a pleasant vacation?
Not that it's a "pleasant vacation" now, but just curious about that. It seems to me that laws are always going to be disagreed on by people, including drug possession ... but what's the use of laws if they are not enforced at all unless 100% of the population agrees with them? I bet I could find a lot of people that disagree with a lot more laws than you do. In fact, I probably just have to walk to the nearest penitentiary.
Re:Stupid Brits (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm. (Score:2, Interesting)
The idea that we are spending our money to put people in "time-out" for using drugs, or any other victimless crime is fucking stupid and any logical person knows that.
Studies have shown that interactive constructive environments in jails/prisons improve behavior and rehabilitation rates. So maybe they don't need mindless entertainment like TV, but I hardly think 23 hours of bare concrete is a better choice.
Re:Hmmm. (Score:2, Interesting)
Do you really think they spend most of their time watching TV? Have you ever seen a prison inmate or one recently released? If they're in for any length of time, they work out. They work out all the time because there's nothing else to do. Even inmates can only watch so much TV before they become bored. Since they probably have to watch their back all the time and be ready for anything, they're better off working out and staying in shape.
If they were sitting watching TV all day, they wouldn't have such huge muscles. They'd be skinny little shits that are easy to take down and can't take any hits. That's obviously not the case.
Re:Stupid Brits (Score:5, Interesting)
An asshole who bombs the asshole who is bombing the Kurds while telling us that the reason he is bombing the asshole who is bombing the Kurds is because that asshole is bombing the Kurds is not such an asshole. OUR asshole, however, was an asshole who was bombing the asshole who was bombing the Kurds while lying out of his ass that the reason he is bombing the asshole who is bombing the Kurds is because the asshole who is bombing the Kurds is getting ready to bomb US, which he wasn't.
So the asshole was thinking if he told the truth he might not get to bomb and so he will lie to get his way. That asshole was supposed to work for us, by the way.
Re:Hmmm. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, I don't agree. The recidivism rate here is high because it's impossible to get a job with a conviction. It doesn't really matter what you do in prison, whether you just get in fights and get tattoos, or if you learn some useful skill with computers. Either way, you're going to be unemployed when you get out, and most likely your only way to survive will be to become a career criminal.
This isn't a government problem; it's private companies that won't hire ex-cons. However, it is partially the government's fault for keeping Prohibition going for decades, creating a whole class of people who can't work normal jobs because they went to prison for possessing naturally-growing plants.
Re:Don't they... (Score:3, Interesting)
The Running Man (the book, that is) creeps me out every time I read it. The hero flies a 747 into a skyscraper. Almost EXACTLY the same way the 9/11 strikes happened. And you tell me no one doing anti-terrorism at the time investigated that method of attack?
CAPTCHA is 'ostrich'. Talk about heads in the sand...
Re:Why did he do it? (Score:3, Interesting)
If anyone is an idiot in this situation, I think the prison officials absolutely deserve that title.
Re:Stupid Brits (Score:2, Interesting)
We shot Iraqi people, We bombed Iraqi people, and we occupied their land.
We also at this point have likely reduced Kurdish autonomy for better cooperation with Turkey.
We didn't even hit Suddam with a bomb, so saying we bombed the asshole gassed the Kurds is absurd on the face of it.
Re:Hmmm. (Score:4, Interesting)
What you don't understand is that in many other Western countries, people actually get their slate cleaned when they have served their sentence. Employers are not allowed to ask about or investigate former criminal records, except in very special circumstances. Discrimination based on a person's past is as illegal as discrimination based on gender, religion (including lack thereof) or sexual orientation.
So convicts can really get jobs afterwards, unlike in the US, where every sentence in reality is a life sentence.
Take a look at statistics for various countries. And what the countries have in common.
There's a very clear correlation between the countries that abhor justice being used as a tool for vengeance and both low crime rates in general and low recidivism rates.
And no, it's not the drug crimes that solely is the reason for the high statistics in the US. Free all drug "criminals", and you'll still have more than five times as many people imprisoned as countries like e.g. the Scandinavian ones. And a much higher recidivism rate too.
Like it or not, the US justice system is based on vengeance (as preached by certain religions), and vengeance never reduces violence.
Re:Hmmm. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not an expert on this as I've never been convicted of (or arrested for) a crime, so this is just from what I've heard and read. Most employment applications ask if you've ever been convicted of a crime (other than speeding/parking tickets), yes/no. Answering this falsely can mean immediate termination if they ever find out, and possibly even get you sued (not likely). However, for them to find out means they'd have to do a background check. I'm pretty sure conviction information is publicly available, and background checking agencies specialize in finding that stuff. Not all employers do background checks; government jobs requiring a clearance obviously do this, and certain other jobs too, but most probably don't. As an embedded software developer, I think I've only had two, one when I was doing an internship for a military contractor, and at my most recent job which is in the financial industry. I don't think the other jobs did any background checks, and mostly didn't even bother checking references either.
A quick Google search turned up some Yahoo! Answers questions about this topic, with totally different answers: 1) Honesty is the best policy, some employers will understand, etc., and 2) Honestly will keep you unemployed because no one will hire an ex-con when people with clean records are available.
It sounds like your system in the Netherlands is much better, since most jobs don't need to know your criminal record (of course, unless you're around children, or large sums of money). Of course, your system on narcotics is much better too so that doesn't surprise me. We still haven't learned the lessons of Prohibition after 80 years, though unfortunately most other countries are making the exact same mistake.
A white-hat must be able to think like a black-hat (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't subscribe to the train of thought that the best security specialists are ex black-hats. Mainly because most black-hats are only out, open about it, because they have been caught. IMHO this doesn't make them good it just goes to show that they are rather poor at it. They did get caught right?
Though they would never admit it, I imagine that most of the best white-hats / security specialists I have known have likely wore a black-hat at some point in their past.
Just as I would state that the best computer scientists are those that grew up with a curiosity and interest in computing that cannot be extinguished one has to have the ability to put themselves in their opponent's mindset (the white-hat in the mind of the black-hat) or they won't be very successful.
I have done so much information / network security tasks combined with countless internal security audits (Sarbanes, etc) that I cannot connect to a network or walk into a new building without thinking about how one would theoretically subvert the systems in place. This doesn't mean I am acting on this knowledge but I would say it is a switch that gets turned on in the best security professionals that cannot be turned off. I'll meet someone at their office for the first time and find myself saying something like: "Physical security is terrible here, why would anyone waste time hacking into a network located in this facility when they could just walk right through the front door?" This is constructive criticism, though I shouldn't be giving away my knowledge as doing so reduces the perceived impression of the value of people in my profession.
I was working on Bank of America's firewall team, early in my career, and a potential candidate had made it past our teams rigorous technical screening and though maybe unknown to him he was going to be offered the job, as he had impressed us with his knowledge, and the meeting with our manager that turned into lunch with the team was just a formality. That was until during lunch when he openly stated "He had worn so man color hats, white, black, gray that he often gets confused on which he is currently wearing." We all looked at one another and sighed because we all knew such a statement had made him ineligible for the position. We were not upset that we might have hired a former black-hat but rather disappointed that he was so naive about the environment that he would openly state such a stupid declaration in front of us and our manager. If he were experienced enough to realize his mistake before making it he would have likely been a valuable member of that team.
It's like a television show called MasterMinds on the History channel that shows supposedly criminal master-minds, the details of their crimes, and the story of how they were eventually caught. I wouldn't call any of these people criminal master-minds. A show about criminal master-minds would not be that entertaining because they would say this is how it was concluded that a crime had been committed, if they could even determine that, and then they would explain how they don't know how the crime(s) were committed, and that the unknown suspects have yet to be identified. This is because a true criminal master-mind would have never been identified and the crime would be so unique as to defy description.
I tried to explain to a close-minded information security professor, during my Masters program, that going through detailed descriptions of known security exploits was a waste of time. I tried to no avail to explain that known (named) security exploits posed no threat, as they would have a countermeasure in place already and that the real risk was security exploits that have yet to be identified because their is no current countermeasure for them. I suggested that discussing the inherent security risks of deploying UDP on a network, for which I later wrote a research paper, or similar such topics would be a better use of our time. Rather than taking advice from a graduate student, the professor instead had us s
Re:Six years? (Score:3, Interesting)
IN PRISON: You spend the majority of your time in a 10X10 cell.
AT WORK: You spend the majority of your time in an 8X8 cubicle.
IN PRISON: You get three meals a day.
AT WORK: You get a break for one meal and you have to pay for it.
IN PRISON: You get time off for good behavior.
AT WORK: You get more work for good behavior.
IN PRISON: The guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you.
AT WORK: You must often carry a security card and open all the doors for yourself.
IN PRISON: You can watch TV and play games.
AT WORK: You could get fired for watching TV and playing games.
IN PRISON: You get your own toilet.
AT WORK: You have to share the toilet with some people who pee on the seat.
IN PRISON: They allow your family and friends to visit.
AT WORK: You arenÃâât even supposed to speak to your family.
IN PRISON: All expenses are paid by the taxpayers with no work required.
AT WORK: you get to pay all your expenses to go to work, and they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners.
IN PRISON: You spend most of your life inside bars wanting to get out.
AT WORK: You spend most of your time wanting to get out and go inside bars.
IN PRISON: You must deal with sadistic wardens.
AT WORK: They are called managers.