Romanian Accused of Breaking Into NASA

alphadogg writes "Romanian authorities have arrested a 26-year old hacker who is accused of breaking into multiple NASA servers and causing $500,000 in damages to the U.S. space agency's systems. Robert Butyka, 26, was arrested on Tuesday in Western Romania following an investigation by the Romanian Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism. According to local reports, the hacker used the online moniker of 'Iceman.' He does not have a higher education or an occupation, a DIICOT spokeswoman said."

...not to endorse his actions

[Anonymous Coward]

...but why aren't IT admins being held accountable for the lax security on their servers? And no, I don't buy the "if I leave my door unlocked, it's not an invitation to break in", since it's a paid position. If a cop fails to prevent a crime due to neglicence, the city can be sued. Most of these break-ins are due to IT negligence, not hacker genius.

Re:Education

[ByOhTek]

How much you make doesn't indicate how much you know.

I have a friend who is a complete idiot in the functional aspect of doing his job, lacking the background education, but he's good with people and instead delegates most of the functional work to others (basically acting like a manager, though he isn't), and makes a huge salary.

And I've another friend, who also lacks the background education, but is very competent, and makes a huge salary.

i.e. Salary does not indicate competence and qualification, sadly this seems to be especially true when you get to managerial and executive level positions, which half the time simply need a warm body to fill a chair and occasionally point in a (hopefully good) direction.

Likewise, Education (or lack thereof) does not indicate competence or qualification.

In general there are trends towards better education meaning more competence, and more competence correlating to higher salary, but they are by no means tight or without exception.

No education or occupation

[roman_mir]

According to local reports, the hacker used the online moniker of "Iceman." He does not have a higher education or an occupation, a DIICOT spokeswoman said.

No education and no occupation, ha?

So who is working for NASA then, that this 'no-education and no-occupation' individual is able to break into their systems?

Butyka is accused of hacking into several NASA servers over a period of time that started on Dec. 12, 2010. The authorities claim that the hacker destroyed protected data and restricted access to it. The charges brought against Butyka include obtaining unauthorized access and causing severe disruptions to a computer system, modifying, damaging and restricting access to data without authorization and possession of hacking programs.

He possess hacking programs, that means he is a terrorist. What kind of 'severe disruptions' did he cause that cost 500,000 USD?

Romanian authorities have arrested a 26-year old hacker who is accused of breaking into multiple NASA servers and causing $500,000 in damages to the U.S. space agency's systems.

- this is a bunch of nonsense.

He cost an admin a few hours of time and maybe a reinstall and reconfigure. Even at 1000USD / hour no way somebody spent 500 hours on it (that's 20.8 24 hour days) or 12.5 40 hour weeks.

This is more government nonsense.

Re:How much?

[moogied]

Its not just a restore. There was an investigation, then an audit process for the proposed change, then you have the CAB meetings, the testing in dev, then in stage, then finally the push to production environment. Then you have possible hardware changes(depending on mode of access), and additionally you need to sanitize the environment to be 100% sure nothing was left behind. Thats easily a few hundred man hours . 500k may be a tad high(depending on a lot of things), but its not unreasonable.

Re:Damages

[bberens]

You get a few senior level IT people in a room and a single meeting can easily cost $1k. Total time to figure out what happened, track the guy down, etc. could easily cost $500k.

Re:...not to endorse his actions

[timeOday]

Most of these break-ins are due to IT negligence, not hacker genius.

I think negligence would be *very* hard to establish. First, most computer bugs, including vulnerabilities, are very obvious - in retrospect. Finding the needle in the haystack is easy after somebody points it out to you. That's entirely different than integrating hundreds of software components without creating any "obvious" holes.

Second, how many sysadmins are given all the resources they would like to do their jobs? Security is cost/benefit, like anything else, you devote enough resources to make the pain tolerable, and no more. That means most admins have far more responsibilities than they can cover 100%.

Re:No education or occupation

[timeOday]

So who is working for NASA then, that this 'no-education and no-occupation' individual is able to break into their systems?

So anybody who can smash a car window and steal a stereo is smarter than the guys who design cars? That is not a logical conclusion.

Re:Education

[0-until-pink]

This reminds me of the Kurt Vonnegut bit in Slaughterhouse Five about Americans attitude towards esteem and money.

"America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, “It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.” It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: “if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register."

The real story here...

[DeltaVelocity]

...is not that a Romanian hacker got into NASA systems and caused an alleged $500k in damages/remediation expenses. The real story is that the Romanian authorities actually DID something about it.