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

[Gary Baribault <gary () baribault net>]

The real funny part is where 15 teachers voted .. you mean there are 15
teachers at Dawson that understand the implications of a pen test tool?
I am in Montreal and I know Dawson, they are usually much saner than that!

Let's see if they now have the guts to do a Mea Culpa and fix this
injustice.

Gary Baribault
Courriel: gary () baribault net
GPG Key: 0x685430d1
Signature: 9E4D 1B7C CB9F 9239 11D9 71C3 6C35 C6B7 6854 30D1

On 01/24/2013 10:16 AM, Benjamin Kreuter wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Jan 2013 08:32:11 +0000
> Benji <me () b3nji com> wrote:
>
> > Someone please explain to me why he had to run a vulnerability
> > scanner to check one vulnerability, and again, how are we still
> > arguing about this? Whether you think he had a 'right' to test this
> > or not, he was either too dumb or too naive to know it was against
> > the law.
>
> I do not think the issue is whether or not he broke the law; rather,
> the issue is whether or not the law serves the people's interest.  I am
> not a Canadian, so maybe I do not really have a say, but given that
> this kid did not cause any measurable damage, it seems hard to make the
> case that he should have been punished for his actions.  Throwing a
> student out of school because he used a pen-testing tool is more
> damaging to the school and to society as a whole than what the student
> actually did.
>
> There is also the matter of the school itself.  They were presented
> with a student who had found a vulnerability, reported it, and then
> checked to see if there were still problems.  Does expulsion really
> sound like a reasonable punishment to you?  Does any punishment seem in
> order, given that the student made no attempt to maliciously exploit
> his discoveries?  It seems to me that a much better approach would have
> been to offer the student a chance to present the vulnerability in a
> computer security class.  The school's mission is, theoretically, to
> teach its students -- why, then, would they remove from the student
> body someone who could do just that?
>
> Sure, maybe the school has a policy of expulsion for any student who
> breaks the law -- but why would the school expel a student
> preemptively, before he was even found guilty by a court (or even
> charged with a crime)?  If he had been arrested, it would have made
> sense for the school to put him on academic suspension until the
> conclusion of his criminal case, at which point a guilty verdict might
> mean expulsion.
>
> -- Ben
>
>
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