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.'"
Don't they... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Don't they... (Score:5, Funny)
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with a couple of scantily-clad "analysts",
Think of the straight hackers! Supply some scantily-clad "vaginalists" as well :-)
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So it's Starship Troopers?
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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...
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No, they were designed to withstand a 707. And they did withstand the impact. What got them was the burning fuel.
Re:Don't they... (Score:5, Informative)
Paragraph 4 of TFA has the hidden "gem":
"The blunder emerged a week after the Sunday Mirror revealed how an inmate at the same jail managed to get a key cut that opened every door."
I wonder if that fella was employed as a locksmith at the jail after having been arrested for breaking and entering...
Re:Don't they... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Don't they... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would they hire some guy so inept he got caught TWICE?
For the same reason the US keeps buying stuff from China.
eg. it's *cheap*
Re:Don't they... (Score:4, Informative)
OMG NOT THE HARD DRIVE ONE ONE 1111 (Score:2)
Re:OMG NOT THE HARD DRIVE ONE ONE 1111 (Score:5, Insightful)
...should always have been done so under supervision and with logging...
I agree with the logging side, but if they give him Admin then all the log will contain is him locating and killing the logging script (This CAN be avoided, but I doubt that they would have gone through that much trouble even if they were logging). The supervision probably would have been pointless though. More than likely, it would be a trained guard standing over him watching him do EXACTLY what he did. And, if asked what he was doing, he'd explain that he was adjusting permissions so that everything would work. If they hired somebody to supervise that could accurately determine whether he was being malicious, they could probably just ask the supervisor to do the job.
Hell, if you ask me to supervise an inmate in a chem lab while he brews up aspirin and he's actually making nitroglycerin, I'd probably stand there and ignorantly watch him make nitroglycerin.
Re:OTOH... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup that was my first reaction too. They let you on a box to install a prison-wide TV system so what do you do?
A. Install the system, get the props from your fellow inmates who know you are responsible for keeping their new toy running; get props from the authorities, increasing your chances of an early release; build enough trust that maybe in the future you'll be allowed somewhere near a box to do other fun stuff,
OR,
B. SNAFU the system, volunteer as the authorities' punching bag; blow your chances of an early release; and ensure you will not be allowed anywhere near anything more advanced than a transistor radio for the next 5 years?
Which just goes to show that intelligence doesn't immunise you against stupidity.
Oh man... (Score:5, Funny)
God DAMN it! (Score:5, Funny)
ehh (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Or starring Jeffrery Dahmer on an episode of Iron Chef.
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No way would that be a bad idea - That would be the PPV episode. I'd tune in just out of curiosity as to what the dessert would be - Sweet-bread sorbet? Liver mousse?
"The winner will get the privilege of having dinner tomorrow with me. The loser will also get to come, but I need you to arrive 4 hours early after bathing in Worcestershire for 3 hours."
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Thats almost as dumb as putting a Halliburton CEO in charge of the entire military.
Luckily nothing that stupid would ever happen here in America.
You're right, that never happened. While Dick Cheney was at one point the CEO of Halliburton, he was in charge of the U.S. military before he worked for Halliburton. As Vice President he had no authority over the military.
Re:Stupid Brits (Score:4, Interesting)
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If the military was assigned to "protect" the interests of Haliburton (which it was), there was indirect control. Nice revisionism.
Re:Stupid Brits (Score:5, Insightful)
And this felon had "no authority" over the prison computer system.
You don't need "authority", you just need access.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Dark Helmet:
How many Assholes we got on this ship, any how?
Everyone:
Yo!
Dark Helmet:
I knew it. I'm surrounded by Assholes. *closes helmet* Keep firing, Assholes!
Re:Stupid Brits (Score:5, Informative)
How about the asshole who gave the asshole gassing the Kurds the gas in the first place?
Oh right, that would be Donald Rumsfeld who completed that deal during the Reagen administration, not Richard Cheney.
Re:Stupid Brits (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait a sec, have the goal posts moved again? It was about weapons of mass destruction, then it was about bringing democracy to masses yearning for it, then it was about protecting the Sunnis from the Shiite forces that we kind of, um, unleashed on them, and now it's payback for the Kurds?
I think the real motivation was to revive the corpse of Gilgamesh and create a new race of super-warriors, but that's just my theory.
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You mean like the "America Police Force" private detention facility in Hardin, Montana? [billingsgazette.com]
Ex-coke-head dry-drunk (Score:2)
Correction: "ex-coke-head dry-drunk". That's my understanding, anyway.
Press release (Score:5, Funny)
Chicken Coop, Inc. is proud to announce the promotion of Mr. Fox to the position of chief of security...
Six years? (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Six years? (Score:5, Funny)
Still, I think it is comparable to cubical life.
OK, that may be the most ignorant, presumptive thing I've read all day. I've seen prisons and I work in a cubicle. The two situations are nothing alike.
Prisoners get access to a gym and exercise yard...
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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 w
Re:Six years? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the poster that you're replying to was implying that the six year sentence is hardly a deterrent for the amount that the criminal was convicted for stealing. If stealing 6.5 million pounds gets you six years in the slammer, and the alternative is working 20 years for only 2.5 million pounds, then suddenly the risk of getting caught doesn't seem so bad.
(Well, I wouldn't want to even spend one minute in prison, let alone six years, but that's just me :-D )
I think their whole point was that six years is way too small of a sentence for someone who stole that much money, not that he got to keep it after he was released. Keep in mind, there are cyber-criminals that are still at large, so there are some that get away with it. They usually get caught only when they don't know their boundaries and try to go for TOO much.
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Burn through 1 Mil, hide the rest and tell the cops you spent it all on drugs and hookers!
Hmmm. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm. (Score:4, Insightful)
Interesting that inmates have access to computers and TV. I'm glad we pay for that for them while normal citizens are having a hard time finding a job...
Considering most of them are in their for minor drug charges and are no more evil than you or me...
And that most of the tax money goes into the hands of the private corporations running the prisons and use the inmates for sub minimum wage labor at a profit which none goes back to the tax payers.
So simple solution... Reform the laws and decriminalize these minor offenses and revoke the contracts with the private corporations running these prisions.
Re:Hmmm. (Score:5, Informative)
Oddly enough, when I start googling for statistics to support your statement, I find things that say that there are fewer Drug offenders in prison that people convicted of Property crimes, and fewer of both those groups combined than people convicted of Violent crimes.
In other words, drug charges, major or minor, account for about 22% of the prison population in the USA.
Oh, and 55% of the prison population are in for violent crimes, and the remainder for property crimes.
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I wonder how many of those violent crimes were committed by drug addicts.
Re:Hmmm. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm guessing you went to The Bureau of Justice Stastics [usdoj.gov] site, which indeed says that in 2005, 53% were for violent crimes, 19% were property crimes, and 19% were drug crimes (it also says 8% are "public order" crimes; i.e., bullshit "crimes" like public intoxiction or prostitution).
While it's a relief that half of the prisoners aren't in there for drugs, fully one in five inmates are incarcerated for drugs.
It gives 2008 numbers for how many there are, but 20% of 2,310,984 is 462,197. Half a million Americans are imprisoned for drug crimes. And when they get out of prison, where will they get their money? Nobody wants to hire an ex-con. I would guess that for many of the violent and property offenders, it wasn't their first visit. How many started out getting busted for dope, then couldn't get work and stole to eat?
20% of prisoners, half a million people. It's a huge problem.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Oddly enough, when I start googling for statistics to support your statement, I find things that say that there are fewer Drug offenders in prison that people convicted of Property crimes, and fewer of both those groups combined than people convicted of Violent crimes.
In other words, drug charges, major or minor, account for about 22% of the prison population in the USA.
Oh, and 55% of the prison population are in for violent crimes, and the remainder for property crimes.
So did I, and I found very different numbers:
Federal prisons were estimated to hold 179,204 sentenced inmates as of Sept. 30, 2007. Of these, 15,647 were incarcerated for violent offenses, including 2,915 for homicide, 8,966 for robbery, and 3,939 for other violent crimes. In addition, 10,345 inmates were serving time for property crimes, including 504 for burglary, 7,834 for fraud, and 2,006 for other property offenses. A total of 95,446 were incarcerated for drug offenses. Also, 56,237 were incarcerated f
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So, basically you're saying that the other 1.8 million people in prison in the USA don't count?
Hint: the federal prison population consists of people violating federal laws. Murder, arson, assault, rape, things like that? State laws cover them, unless committed on Federal land or against officers of the Federal government.
Ditto for most property crimes.
Drug crimes, on the other hand, include a lot of smuggling into the country. Which is federal territory.
Hence a large number of drug offenders in Fed
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Considering most of them are in their for minor drug charges and are no more evil than you or me...
That depends on what you mean by "evil."
My ideology/religion/worldview/whatever says everyone is evil. Some people are more "moral" and some are more "law-abiding" however. A minor drug charge is a shift in moral/law-abiding. Read on, though, I'll probably end up agreeing with you...
And that most of the tax money goes into the hands of the private corporations running the prisons and use the inmates for sub minimum wage labor at a profit which none goes back to the tax payers.
Using inmates for labor seems like a good idea to me, frankly. Why simply let them live at the taxpayers' expense? Why not have them work for it? And frankly, not sure why they should even necessarily be paid much, if at a
Re:Hmmm. (Score:5, Insightful)
Civilized countries rehabilitate prisoners, and yes, that includes schooling them on what they will find in society once they've served their sentence.
The alternative, a punishment based system like in the US, causes those coming out of prison to be unemployable, and their only recourse is crime. Which is one of the main reasons why the recidivism rate and percent of the population in prison is much higher in the US than in other western countries.
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Re:Hmmm. (Score:5, Funny)
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Rehabilitation... well, I think that depends. I'm all for letting them work or letting them learn a skill. I'm not for forcing them or paying to try to force them. If they don't want to learn, they're not going to.
And if you murder someone, I don't know what rehabilitation there is for you. Or rape. Or any other violent crime like that.
The stats for repeat offenders is pretty high, as I recall. Rehabilitation isn't working so well. Maybe because you're not changing anything but their external observa
The Three R's (Score:2, Insightful)
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No, the 'civilized' approach of which you speak means that they blindly perform acts that some expert says will reform the criminals, then they let them out, and finally the criminals commit crime again.
That is why the vast majority of people in prison are repeat offenders: reform does not work most of the time.
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:Hmmm. (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't a government problem; it's private companies that won't hire ex-cons.
Do companies in the US have access to that kind of information? In the Netherlands, these records are private, but companies often will require a "declaration of no objection" from new hires for positions of trust. These are requested from the police, and the declaration (if issued) will state that the applicant has nothing in his record indicating a risk for the position he applies for. This to ensure a convicted embezzler doesn't get to work as an accountant again, or a child molester gets a job at a day care center, or a violent criminal a membership at a gun range, while keeping irrelevant facts on that record private.
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.
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Do companies in the US have access to that kind of information? In the Netherlands, these records are private, but companies often will require a "declaration of no objection" from new hires for positions of trust.
The same does not hold true in the US. Any business can do a felony lookup on anyone once they apply and give said company their name, address, etc. Their are free services, often provided at tax-payer expense, to provide public access to felony conviction records.
In the US, generally it is a financial death sentence to get a felony on your record because you will be treated like a pariah in the job market for all but the most menial tasks. This isn't always the case, some felons are able to make it back i
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The high incarceration percentage in the US has nothing at all to do with rehabilitation vs. punishment. The high US incarceration rate is due to Federal minimum mandatory sentences for drug related crimes. If you are caught with more than 1 gram of crack you go to jail for 10 years, no exceptions, no deals and no circumstances will change that sentence. It's a minimum mandatory sentence. Take the drug non violent drug offenders out of the US prisons and the incarceration rate would be identical to European
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.
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Yeah its not like giving them opportunity works and as a result we have a lower re-offending rate than America (harsher prisons) but higher than Sweden (nicer prisons), but fuck it, I'm having a hard time finding a job so all spending should be cut even if it makes everybody less safe and effect wastes more money (1 "expensive" stay vs 10+ cheap stays).
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As stated by others, most are in for drug charges.
Nor will this change. Drugs were made illegal as an easy pretext for jailing minorities in the early 20th century when African Americans and Mexicans were the primary users of marijuana. When almost everyone is doing something and you make it illegal, it becomes much easier to control them. Remember prohibition?
So for these guys, I have a lot of sympathy. For violent criminals I have none and would prefer that they all be locked in solitary and dosed heavily
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Sure thing. And how do you propose to do that? Effectively, that is.
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Interesting that inmates have access to computers and TV. I'm glad we pay for that for them while normal citizens are having a hard time finding a job...
You'd rather the inmates reach their breaking points and tear each other up?
Re:Hmmm. (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting that inmates have access to computers and TV.
Imagine a group of people with little respect for authority, and, in many cases, a history of violence.
Now take away their TV.
Do you really think that putting down prison riots is cheaper than just letting them vegetate in front of the idiot box? Are you, a normal citizen, volunteering for that job? I'm sure there's an opening there.
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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
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"Interesting that inmates have access to computers and TV. I'm glad we pay for that for them while normal citizens are having a hard time finding a job..."
That's because the purpose of prison is to make the most effeminate portions of the public feel good about themselves instead of deter crime by crushing criminals. That an inmate would dare do anything at all against orders means the system is too weak. We should admit we are facing bad people who are willfully beyond redemption and act accordingly. The i
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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
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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 entertain
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No. I think the point is prison shouldn't be used as punishment. It's only function should be removing dangerous people from society and rehabilitating those that are able. 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.
What sucks is that the government knows they make more money and create more jobs putting otherwise innocent people in prison, than doing what the majority of people want: legalization and taxation. This doesn't even take into account the dirty politicians with inside connections in the prison construction and security industries.
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Answer:
Sort of. It seems that there's a group of mods who've decided that anything that's subjective, or opinionated will be marked Flamebait. Any joke that they whoosh on gets marked Troll.
Solution(?):
Metamoderate. Hopefully that lowers the chances of them getting to mod again.
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Now contrast that with... (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course. He was the resident computer guy. (Score:5, Funny)
You're a computer guy, right? My cousin's kid been trying to help us with this TV station thing we're doing but I don't think he knows what he's doing. Plus he's starting soccer now and he doesn't have much time anymore. It's not like you don't, eh? Heh heh.
Anyway, can you help? We use The Windows and all that so it's pretty standard.
You will? Thanks buddy - I'll see that you get some extra "unmonitored" visits from the little lady this month.
Why does it not surprise me... (Score:2)
... that this happened when the "prison source" still refers to a computer as "the hard drive"?
. . . and a chainsaw massacre murderer . . . (Score:5, Funny)
. . . is assigned in prison to garden detail . . . and is given . . . a chainsaw!
The prison now has a few open bunks.
The prison psychologist stated, "I hoped that we could discover how to do pleasant things with a chainsaw, instead of nasty things."
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. . . is assigned in prison to garden detail . . . and is given . . . a chainsaw!
The prison now has a few open bunks.
The prison psychologist stated, "I hoped that we could discover how to do pleasant things with a chainsaw, instead of nasty things."
This may sound strange, but somewhere deep inside, I almost yearn for a "tax cut" type solution ala Running Man.
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No no no, haven't you ever worked anywhere that you had Admin capabilities? The trick is to make yourself indespensible!
Oh, wait...
Seriously though, He probably didn't have access to their entire system. You can cripple a system for its intended use (by adding security restrictions to everything that you have access to) while still lacking acces to, for example, the prisoner info database.
Why did he do it? (Score:5, Insightful)
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If anyone is an idiot in this situation, I think the prison officials absolutely deserve that title.
So much so for the privileges (Score:2)
The lesson to take home: (Score:2)
"Pen-testing" and "set a thief to catch a thief" does not mean letting a thief build your security infrastructure without supervision.
It's "cyber-*" again. (Score:4, Funny)
Ok, I wanted to link to a comment in a previous story here, where someone complained about everything being "cyber-" this and "cyber-" that, and that it makes you sound like it came from the 80s.
I answered, that he then might not like my new "CyberCyber Virtu@l e-Cloud Turbo CoolClick iNetExplorer 2000 XFX GTX - Ultimate Social Web 2.0 Gold Edition"... or something like that.
But strangely, the comment vanished from the face of the net. I searched Google, and even manually went trough all recent articles here containing "cyber". Especially "cybercyber". It's gone!
How can that happen? Anyone care to explain, or find it, even if it's OT? Because this is really strange...
Re:It's "cyber-*" again. (Score:4, Funny)
I answered, that he then might not like my new "CyberCyber Virtu@l e-Cloud Turbo CoolClick iNetExplorer 2000 XFX GTX - Ultimate Social Web 2.0 Gold Edition"... or something like that. But strangely, the comment vanished from the face of the net. I searched Google, and even manually went trough all recent articles here containing "cyber". Especially "cybercyber". It's gone! How can that happen? Anyone care to explain, or find it, even if it's OT? Because this is really strange...
Because Taco has plans for a new CyberCyber Virtu@l e-Cloud Turbo CoolClick iNetExplorer 2000 XFX GTX - Ultimate Social Web 2.0 Gold Edition Slashdot and he doesn't want there to be a record of any prior art.
why thats like putting a tax cheat (Score:4, Funny)
in charge of the Federal Reserve
Series of passwords? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously the prison didn't have anyone IT saavy or they never would have relied on an inmate. As I understand it, he simply changed some admin passwords and set the bios password. When they couldn't figure out how to change things back, they refused to let the guy show them how to fix it and hire an outside consultant.
Sounds like typical authoritarian over-reaction. (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, come on. The man must have known that he would get caught, which leads me to wonder if in fact he really did anything wrong.
Anybody here who wrote a program for a prison system would consider it irresponsible to NOT set passwords. But before you are given a chance to explain the very good reasons for what you've done, the big men with truncheons who are already watching you like a hawk assume the worst and start running around like Chicken Little with the sky falling.
That's my guess.
And chickens just LOVE it when the sky falls; it gives them a sense of purpose and an excuse to play 'hero'. Heck, I know a couple of cops, and they are good people, but their world view is very slanted due to regular exposure to the criminal element. Without a healthy means of grounding to the real world, their sense of reality can become wildly inaccurate. Add to that some over-enlarged ego, lots of fear, pack-mentality and a bit of down-home stupid, and you're looking at a system where innocence is not assumed and some really terrible things can -and do- happen.
I'm not saying the guy was mister pure-heart, but I bet the whole story isn't being represented here. --What with the hysteria that both police and the media typically spin themselves into over anything to do with computer 'hackers', I think this is entirely likely.
But it appears that many posters here aren't capable of remembering the patterns they see in the news wrt this kind of story. Hackers!
-FL
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
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This was the same guy who helped the joker take over Arkham Asylum.
Well, the inmates are clearly running the asylum, and there's at least one joker in the prison's security or management structure, but somehow I don't think that's what you meant.
Re:This is surprising (Score:5, Funny)
Sexual offenders run the prison rape-prevention program.
No, that's already run by designated "I'll be your daddy and protect you from the others" representatives, fairly elected by the general population.
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Restore from your last good backup.
Let me guess the warden's response:
"Backup? Whats that?"
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"Backup? Whats that?"
Duh - that's the thing on the site that you put tapes in to keep the computer on when the power goes out!
Don't you know anything?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Their last good backup? heh
Welcome to MS-DOS
Copyright 1981,82 Microsoft, Inc.
c:\
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Agreed.
He could have done the RIGHT thing which would have not only shortened his sentence, it would have looked great on his resume.
Well, at least it would have looked better than what he did.
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Uh. How many chances? It's not like this person just went "oops, I just made a major cyber crime. I messed up. It was a simple mistake." Aren't these things planned and thought out, and take a fair amount of resources and time? He had a life time of chance... so far, he's used his life and made a lot of people's lives pretty messy (I imagine that having my credit card stolen will make my life pretty messy for a while). What about them, don't they get a second chance?
IMO, let's give him a second chanc
Re: (Score:2)
All right, how will a guy whose main skills are computer related be able to pay back victims of identity theft? Would it be, by any chance, by holding a profitable job where he works with computers? Or do you want to go back to debt prisons where people are kept, at taxpayers expense and without profitable occupation, until they pay back the debt?
In reality, most people will not be able to pay back the victims in their lifetime, let alone in the time after which we think is reasonable to stop punishing some
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
All right, how will a guy whose main skills are computer related be able to pay back victims of identity theft? Would it be, by any chance, by holding a profitable job where he works with computers? Or do you want to go back to debt prisons where people are kept, at taxpayers expense and without profitable occupation, until they pay back the debt?
Debtor's prisons were stupid. Let me just say that much.
I know, you can't pay back if you don't have a profitable job. But just because you went to jail doesn't mean you shouldn't have that debt to pay. I'm not saying that they should stay in jail until they can pay it back. I'm saying they shouldn't "get out of debt free" simply because of jail time. That's not reparation.
In reality, most people will not be able to pay back the victims in their lifetime, let alone in the time after which we think is reasonable to stop punishing someone and let them move on with their lives.
Hm. So, the poor criminal stole too much and he can't pay it back? I'm not sure if I have much sympathy for him. Maybe he should