Youth expelled from Montreal college after finding security flaw
news.nationalpost.com
Youth expelled from Montreal college after finding security flaw
1–10 of 308 posts
Re: Youth expelled from Montreal college after finding security flaw
#2I beleive Skytech should hire this bloke for a "and they lived happily ever after" story. It's essentially a win-win for Skytech.
Re: Youth expelled from Montreal college after finding security flaw
#3Even aside from the fact that he was acting in good faith and did not cause any damage to persons or property (as acknowledged by the software vendor), the procedure used to expel him is woefully lacking. I sat on the highest student discipline tribunal at my (Canadian) university and an expulsion for non-academic reasons - which had to receive final approval from both the President and the Governing Council - would only be recommended in cases involving egregious and likely criminal misconduct and only after the courts had found merit to the allegation.
Furthermore, any student faced with potential expulsion would have been entitled to a series of quasi-judicial hearings and assistance in preparing their defence. To expel someone for non-academic reasons from a publicly-funded institution (which Dawson is) should not be taken lightly and surely never in a fashion where the accused is not permitted to present their case.
Re: Youth expelled from Montreal college after finding security flaw
#4Shame on the faculty! Fire the faculty! I am sure this sort of thing wouldn't fly in France. Looks like Quebec is letting down the Fracophone team. Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité!
Re: Youth expelled from Montreal college after finding security flaw
#5I beleive Skytech should hire this bloke for a "and they lived happily ever after" story. It's essentially a win-win for Skytech.
Maybe, but I hope Ahmed is more ambitious than to work for a company he condemned for "sloppy coding"...
Re: Youth expelled from Montreal college after finding security flaw
#6Clearly the negative reputation Dawson CEGEP has should be applied to the administration, and not the students.
What a clusterfuck. Since when do CEGEPs expel students for running security checks?
Re: Youth expelled from Montreal college after finding security flaw
#7There really needs to be legal protection for acts of white-hat hacking like this. Both protection from prosecution, and protection from reprisal. This kind of stuff isn't going to stop happening unless the act of finding and reporting a security vulnerability becomes legally protected behaviour.
Re: Youth expelled from Montreal college after finding security flaw
#8I love the part of the story where the guy naively assumed that it would take his school less than two days to fix the vulnerability. In reality, would probably take them months.
How long did it take sony to fix their issues? Oh, right, it took someone to explose it publicly. Heh. It's unfortunate how broken some IT organizations are and that they would rather kill the messenger than fix things.
Re: Youth expelled from Montreal college after finding security flaw
#9I found something like this at my school. The administration reacted similarly. But fortunately, I was taking djb's Unix Security Holes at the time, and a harshly-worded note from djb to the Computer Center folks ended up getting me a thank you.
Next semester, though, I refused to sign the new AUP (which included a clause allowing the computer center staff to seize any computer I was using, even at my off-campus home), and they kicked me out of school. (Actually what happened was they locked my course registration account, and wouldn't reinstate it until I signed the policy in their presence. I refused.)
(Sadly, I can't find the full-disclosure thread for this bug. I guess I posted it to my blog, which I deleted after being threatened by school administrators. Oh well. That was 9 years ago!)
Re: Youth expelled from Montreal college after finding security flaw
#10I beleive Skytech should hire this bloke for a "and they lived happily ever after" story. It's essentially a win-win for Skytech.
Maybe, but I hope Ahmed is more ambitious than to work for a company he condemned for "sloppy coding"...
Ahmed could probably lead the charge to turn around "sloppiness". Besides, his career seems to be in doldrums currently. I don't think it would be a bad choice. FWIW, he might be able to use the same testing software on Skytech's products for which he has expelles at Dawson's. That would be a comeback of epic proportions!
On a serious note, can't he appeal to any education monistry outside college?