Hackers Get Choked Up Before Changing My Grades

    By Bill Finnick (Compuphobic)
     (The Sting   -   August 27, 1991)


   If the excellence of a Computer Science program is measured by the
hacking ability of their students, Southern Tech has come into it's own.
   In two separate incidents, unauthorized access has been detected during
routine checking of logs.    Every time someone does any kind of work on
the computers here a record is made.    These records constitute the logs
which are periodically checked for abnormalities.
   One lab assistant was recently fired for unsatisfactory job performance
which included the "possession of pirated software in the work place and
the knowledge of, and possible use of, and unauthorized account in the
cyber lab" according to Stan Corbin, Director of Computer and Network
Support.
   Etop Udoh was terminated from his position as a night lab assistant and
is facing possible punishment under the Georgia Computer Systems Protection
Act and SCT Student Life Regulations.
   In a separate incident an individual, or individuals, gained entry into
sensitive academic files.    They were however unable or unwilling to make
any changes.
   Their trespassing was detected when authorities were checking logs and
found that a password had been used for a programmer who wasn't on campus
or on the system at the time of the entry.
   The perpetrators used methods published in a national hacker's publication.
The holes in the campus' computer system required to use that path have since
been closed.
   Under the Georgia law enacted in July penalties for computer password
disclosure can be as much as $5,000 and a year in jail.   Persons convicted of
computer trespass or forgery face fines up to $50,000 and incarceration for
15 years.
   The Student Life Regulations support the Georgia law and call for mandatory
disclosure of any violations discoverd on campus.
   Computer Trespass covers the removal or alteration of files.    Causing a
computer, or computer network, to malfunction similar to a virus that locks up
a hard drive or renders a disk unusable.
   Altering, creating, or destroying computer data is considered Computer
Forgery.
   The disclosure of numbers, codes, names, or any other means of accessing a
computer system which causes more than $500 in damages (including the fair
market value of any services used and victim expenditure) is considered
Computer Password Disclosure.
   The Georgia Board of Regents, the state colleges' governing body, is
currently rewriting their computer operations regulations which may include
mandatory expulsion from the system of persons abusing computers, networks,
or software and their copy rights.