Re: Student expelled from Montreal college after finding vulnerability that compromised security of 250, 000 students personal data

[Jeffrey Walton <noloader () gmail com>]

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 5:42 PM, Philip Whitehouse <philip () whiuk com> wrote:
> Moreover, he ran it again after reporting it to see if it was still there.
> Essentially he's doing an unauthorised pen test having alerted them that
> he'd done one already.
If his personal information is in the proprietary system, I believe he
has every right to very the security of the system.

Is he allowed to "opt-out" of the system (probably not)? If not, he
has a responsibility to check.

Open question: does Canada have Security Testing and Evaluation (ST&E)
and Reverse Engoneering (ER) exemptions in its laws? Even the United
States' DMCA has them. For reference for others in the US who may be
subject to bullying (companies have tried it on me):

DMCA (PUBLIC LAW 105–304). It has exceptions for reverse engineering
and security testing and evaluation. The RE exemption is in Section
1205 (f) REVERSE ENGINEERING. The ST&E exemption is in Section 1205
(i) SECURITY TESTING.

> a class A moron.
What does that make Omnivox, which appears to have done no testing?

Jeff

> On 21 Jan 2013, at 21:10, Benji <me () b3nji com> wrote:
>
> He found the vulnerability by running Acunetix against the system. He is
> what most be would describe as, a class A moron.
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 8:43 PM, Frank Bures <lisfrank () chem toronto edu>
> wrote:
> > A student has been expelled from Montreal’s Dawson College after he
> > discovered a flaw in the computer system used by most Quebec CEGEPs
> > (General and Vocational Colleges), one which compromised the security of
> > over 250,000 students’ personal information.
> >
> > Ahmed Al-Khabaz, a 20-year-old computer science student at Dawson and a
> > member of the school’s software development club, was working on a mobile
> > app to allow students easier access to their college account when he and a
> > colleague discovered what he describes as “sloppy coding” in the widely
> > used Omnivox software which would allow “anyone with a basic knowledge of
> > computers to gain access to the personal information of any student in the
> > system, including social insurance number, home address and phone number,
> > class schedule, basically all the information the college has on a
> > student.”
> >
> > http://tinyurl.com/bcdrelh

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