Ex-school IT admin binned student, staff accounts and trashed phone system The former IT administrator of a public high school has agreed to plead guilty to a computer abuse charge for deactivating student and staff accounts, wiping some profiles, and disabling the phone system. On Wednesday in a Boston federal court, Conor LaHiff, 30, was charged sans indictment – and agreed [PDF] to plead guilty to …
I am guessing he was, in spite of the role titles, at the bottom of the heap - more PFY 2nd class than BOFH. More Gomer Pyle than George Patton. The "school director of technology" was probably the ranking BOFH.
The BOFH would either go for the window option or something even more nuclear.
LaHiff certainly departed in LeHuff.
Not a deep thinker I suspect. I can think of dozens of really nasty sleepers and evil easter eggs that would only wreak havoc long after I had sipped my first Piña Colada on Ipanema Beach. ;)
I just cannot see where the money is in this lark. The real BOFH is always in credit at the local besides still being employed as well as not incarcerated (miraculous considering the number of homicides.)
If you watch the show, Gomer Pyle was actually a pretty good soldier, and most definitely would not have broken something on purpose. Now, breaking something by stupidity, sure, he'd do that if it was funny.
Also, the actor was a very good singer.
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Make sure it's a non-stop flight. A friend of mine had worked as a police officer and was involved in the detainment, arrest, and extradition of some poor sod illegally fleeing his dictator-controlled, third-world, hellhole of a home country. The sod wasn't even trying to enter our country; his flight simply had a layover here. Someone -- possibly racist -- triggered on his physical features, called security, official questions were asked, documents were produced which weren't quite up-to-snuff, he was detained for further investigation, then arrested, held for deportation, and eventually returned to his home country, where he was undoubtedly tortured to death, because that's the sort of "government" they have.
My friend went on a multi-day bender, then resigned his position. And that's one reason why he's my friend.
ndeed. I do wonder why someone with half a brain would think they could actually get away with it.
Hmmm... I think I just addressed my own statement.
Seems that one thing all criminals have in common is less than half their brain cells are working and they think they can get away with it.
Also quite a d'oh moment for the IT department of that school. Why is their account still active after they had stopped being employed? No, I do not blame the victim, but that was a stupid thing to have happened. If you sack somebody you need to disable their f'ing accounts... Jeesh!
Still, not a cool move.
And the bofh would not have been sacked, and not found out. Instead it would have been pinned on the head of systems, helpdesk and IT.
This might sound painfully cringe but I logged into a few service accounts I knew by heart a few times after my termination from one job, just to make sure than the factory systems I'd set up were still running smoothly and nothing had broken down from a cock-up since. All was good, so I signed off those for good.
Re spare accounts:
1. Doesn't the head of computer security have independent-of-BOFH programs which scan for and report the existence of root-equivalent and administrator-equivalent accounts?
2. Doesn't every BOFH have at least one piece of software they've modified and installed from source which (a) has legitimate need for root/administrator-equivalent privileges, and, (b) when presented with certain magical inputs and the appropriate passphrase, gives the user a root/administrator-level shell prompt?
There's nothing in the article that says that he no longer had access after he was fired.
It's a university. Those things are not exactly renowned for having proper firing procedures, let alone IT procedures. I'm guessing he got called to the Head Office (or whatever equivalent), got told he was fired, and got sent back to his desk to clean up by himself and let himself out.
Yes, he's a blithering idiot and yes, he will never get work as an IT admin again. Way to capitalize on your diplomas. But there is nothing that says that he went home and wreaked havoc from there - although there's a 99% chance that the uni would not have had the administrative time to lock his account before that since unis are serially incompetent in everything IT.
So yeah, he was an idiot, but if the uni had handled the situation with proper oversight, it wouldn't have happened. The uni paid the price in inconvenience. The idiot will pay the price in a McDonalds kitchen.
Fitting for all, I say.
In the US vocational-technical high school is a step down from a university. In fact, in the old days most of the students at such a school would not have been expected to attend a university--the instruction focused on trades, not on college preparation.
Having said that, US school districts often have IT departments that manage the systems of several or many schools. Whether that is the arrangement in Haverhill, Massachusetts, I don't know
The real BOFH knows so much better how to create real mayhem and get away with the sabotage, even when he is still in the building, as witnessed when he used his ether-killer.
"The 31 hefty nicad batteries that make up almost the entire inside of my "laptop" pour grunt into a tripling inverter which in turn supplies RICH, CHUNKY VOLTS to alternate pins on the "SCSI" bus, whilst emitting a dull "uuurk" sound."
Ah, quintessential BOFH right here. Does this mean he invented the concept that would later become the "USB Killer"?
"the ex-admin should first learn of their firing by discovering their creds no longer work."
Ah, constructive dismissal - cue compensation for loss of dignity, lost income, etc., paid by the employer to the ex-admin, not to mention the possibility of an order to reinstate employment.
In many countries there are very specific processes that need to be followed to dismiss someone - calling them into the office and telling them they are fired doesn't cut it except in very exceptional circumstances.
If he was sacked there must have been something already going on so why wasn't he locked out first? Basic opsec. As suggested he might have had a back door -- audits may have been his responsibility so he can hide but still... The guy needed to go so check that your car isn't beneath the chosen window.
"After losing his job, LaHiff allegedly used his administrative privileges to wreak havoc on the school's IT network
Once again an organisation succumbs to poor management policy. Privileges should be removed before the dismissed party leaves the premises for the last time and they should be closely supervised from the moment the decision is imparted to the moment they depart.
Though in this case his professional reputation is completely ruined, and even in a non-technical position potential employers are going to be putting him at the back of the hiring line because they're not going to trust anyone who willingly destroys property. That's going to be far more punishing in the long run than a stint in a minimum security jail cell.
"Where someone gets charged with a whole heap of crimes, but plea bargains them all down to a single charge of littering..."
The typical scenario in the US is charging someone innocent with drug possession, threatening months of incarceration, legal bills and severe jail time, then good cop says, just plead guilty to these minor charges and we let you go. Boom, innocent person now has criminal drug convictions on record and the cops pat themselves on the back for another uptick in their conviction stats.
Yup - that's always the fear with these stories: His plea deal could be the result of being bullied into it through threats of 'We've proof it was you, so just go easy on yourself and admit it'.
That approach casts some doubt as to if the person was ever guilty. All it does tell us is they (the police/prosecutors) didn't have a solid case.
Doesn't mean he was innocent - he might have known his goose was cooked and saw the plea deal as his best hope of getting off lightly. But it also raises the spectre of him being innocent and some other actor was behind the mischief - or perhaps it was pure incompetence.
Either way, the best option is always to ensure that the person leaving has had their accounts/access/privileges revoked before they're walked out of the building - best for the employer, and the employee, simply because it helps to protect both - removes temptation from him, and gives him a damn good alibi should something like this happen. Of course, should there be someone else who was planning on such mischief... not revoking his access would give them the perfect scape goat.
The penalties, in my mind, are not sufficient to achieve the goal of ensuring that this is the last time that anyone ever will try something like this, after seeing what happened to him for doing it.
Therefore, innocent people will continue to be forced to go to effort and expense to lock out fired employees from their computer systems.
And I note that he was charged with causing damage to a "protected" computer system. Instead, the law should give equally severe penalties to people who tamper with any computer system, such as your home computer and mine.
Of course, legal penalties for hacking that inspire terror only work against miscreants not working from within unfriendly nations not subject to regime change, such as Russia and China with their nuclear weapons. So we also need operating systems like Windows and OS X to be made secure.
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