Student expelled after he discovered flaw in school’s data security

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~DoctorV23 Feb 7, 2013

[link] -An interesting story I came across and thought I'd share here.
It raises serious questions about how an institution responds to constructive criticism - in this case, an effort to protect common interests. Instead of seeing it as such, the school chose to expel the student, citing him for improper conduct. It would have been just as easy and possibly more rational to thank him for his efforts.
Was Dawson College justified in its decision, or is it an example of a narrow-minded reaction -or did it have something to do with his not very Anglo-Saxon (or French) name?
thoughts?

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*kaikaku Feb 19, 2013 General Artist

There really isn't enough information given in the article to say conclusively what I think of this issue. But generally speaking, security through obscurity isn't really security; a lot of organizations don't seem to grasp this. Dawson College sounds like it might be one of them.

A lot of people are saying that what he did is basically mess with someone's locks to see if he could get in. I don't think that analogy an apt one. For one, his own student info is also behind the lock, so it's not like he has no stake in whether or not it's secure.

~kitsumekat Feb 14, 2013

The guy is not innocent.

=Svataben Feb 11, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

"he was expelled after he repeatedly tried to gain access to areas of the college information system where he had no authorization."
He had been told repeatedly to stop, but he was so hung up on enlarging his metaphorical penis that he didn't listen
He broke the law, got warned, did it again, got removed. its all very logical. He had it coming.

`AbCat Feb 11, 2013 Writer

I used to play Risk online, and there was this prick there who always used to post thousands of weird ascii characters in the chat window, which would cause the game to crash for anyone whose PC didn't have the memory to deal with it. When challenged by the mods he said he was doing it to expose a flaw in their programming. They fixed the flaw and banned him.

~DarkFox37 Feb 10, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

The school probably should have responded to the problem he found, but at the same time, he should have stopped meddling when he was instructed to do so. Not listening to the school in this case I would say is indeed improper conduct.

=puppy-dangerous Feb 8, 2013 Professional General Artist

He was expelled because he repeatedly tried to gain access to records- he was trying to hack into the school system.

Which is not allowed.

It's not constructive criticism.

It's like robber saying they were just testing your locks when you call the cops.

~sonrouge Feb 7, 2013

A bit too much "he said, he said" to nail down who was actually in the wrong, but I will say that there are a lot of places out there (the Federal Government being top of the list) who will move heaven and earth to hide a problem rather than lift a finger to fix it.

~Zer05um Feb 12, 2013 Professional General Artist

Which always makes me confused, since the efforts taken to hide the problem are often more expensive than fixing it would be.

~sonrouge Feb 12, 2013

Some people think that a problem ceases to exist if it isn't acknowledged, and they stick to that absurd view even when it refuses to go away (our current debt and deficit are good examples).

~Zer05um Feb 13, 2013 Professional General Artist

Humans.

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Student expelled after he discovered flaw in school’s data security

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