Investigation Finds Inmates Built Computers, Hid Them In Prison Ceiling (cbs6albany.com) 258
An anonymous reader quotes a report from WRGB: The discovery of two working computers hidden in a ceiling at the Marion Correctional Institution prompted an investigation by the state into how inmates got access. In late July, 2015 staff at the prison discovered the computers hidden on a plywood board in the ceiling above a training room closet. The computers were also connected to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction's network. Authorities say they were first tipped off to a possible problem in July, when their computer network support team got an alert that a computer "exceeded a daily internet usage threshold." When they checked the login being used, they discovered an employee's credentials were being used on days he wasn't scheduled to work. That's when they tracked down where the connection was coming from and alerted Marion Correctional Institution of a possible problem. Investigators say there was lax supervision at the prison, which gave inmates the ability to build computers from parts, get them through security checks, and hide them in the ceiling. The inmates were also able to run cabling, connecting the computers to the prison's network. Furthermore, "investigators found an inmate used the computers to steal the identify of another inmate, and then submit credit card applications, and commit tax fraud," reports WRGB. "They also found inmates used the computers to create security clearance passes that gave them access to restricted areas."
H1B Visa? (Score:5, Funny)
H1B Visa cheap labor? Pft. Just look at home and hire some inmates
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Used to be that Dell would use prison labor directly to recycle computers and do tech support. These days UNICOR resells the labor, so any scrutiny is on some faceless corp rather than the corp getting the benefits.
So yeah, that labor pool is already tapped for silicon valley.
Real fun is we get to accuse silicon valley corps of doing what we all knew they were doing all along; using software to build poverty traps which in turn break up families and drive up crime so they can hire the criminals for peanuts
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There is an argument that the American prisons are a disguised version of modern slavery. They perform an *enormous* of manufacturing for which the prisoners receive no wages. And since the prisons are run by private companies they are run for profit, so it's not just to cover their own costs. There is no other country in the world in which such a large percentage of its population is locked up. And thanks to the 3-strikes rule some of them are there for very offences - there are prisoners with a life sente
Re: H1B Visa? (Score:2, Informative)
You are wrong on most items in your list.
There is not a lot of manufacturing being done by prison inmates. Where they do work, Inmates receive a wage for their work. Most prisons are not privately owned. Three strikes requires theee felony convictions. But, by all means, continue.
Re: H1B Visa? (Score:4, Insightful)
1 felony,
Released on bail,
Got a job as part of release agreement
Missed 2 court appearances - failure to appear on a felony is a felony
2 more felonies - now total 3 felonies; 3 strikes rule kicks in and they're gone for life for being down an out and a bad desperate choice.
Nice system we have.
Re: H1B Visa? (Score:4, Interesting)
2 more felonies - now total 3 felonies; 3 strikes rule kicks in and they're gone for life for being down an out and a bad desperate choice.
Bullshit. California has the toughest 3-strikes law in the country, and even there two of the three felonies must be serious or violent crimes.
Kelly Turner [mercurynews.com] went to prison for life for writing a bad check, but the other two convictions were for armed robbery, not "missing an appointment".
America's prison system has many serious problems. The reality is bad enough without you making up nonsense.
Re: H1B Visa? (Score:3)
I watched someone go down for life with a felony for stealing a bathmat. It was "violent" in theory, but not practically.
It was on the back porch. The owner was home. There was a railing, which meant the bathmat was "in" the house. The house was occupied, and burglary of an occupied residence is a violent felony (they treat it like home invasion).
I had a "violent" felony for making a firecracker. They go off the federal classifications, and flash powder can be a high explosive if you have enough of it.
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The population of *non-Hispanic whites* is 32%, roughly half their comparative incidence in the general population at 62%
Black men are 37% of the prison population, 12% of general population (a 3x skewing).
Hispanic men are 22% of the prison population, 17% of the general po
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Re: H1B Visa? (Score:2, Informative)
Disaffected Trump voters I assume.
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How do they build poverty traps?
You make your own tools out of toothbrush handles and bedpost shards and plastic cutlery to make a tap that can bite into the Thicknet cable in the prison ceiling so you can get on the network.
Oh, wait, I thought you said poverty taps, my mistake.
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Bill I'm taking off this weekend and if try to call me in I will sank you in the back.
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Yeah, that explains all the rough-looking guys with tattoos suddenly showing up on Upwork with, ahem, unique skill sets.
Someone hire them... (Score:5, Interesting)
They sound like better job candidates that the millennial types that come through our doors. US millennials especially, they seem to think they deserve a cookie for knowing very basic things.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Someone hire them... (Score:5, Funny)
Boomers don't need computer thingy. Back in their day they didn't need no stinkin computers. Of course back in their day you hired twice as many people because people were cheap and equipment expensive. Now equipment is cheap and people are expensive.
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Son, back in my day we had computers... and they had lights on the front panel that showed you the CPU register contents and switches for loading values into those registers. It was awesome.
EEs back in the day had a straightforward default approach to controlling current: you make or break a mechanical contact. None of this monitor the input and switch the machine between a low and high power state nonsense. They were mad for switches, so this is what the front panel of a computer looked like [wikimedia.org].
And every
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The trouble with technology in the workplace is that once it crosses the threshold from necessary to efficiency, it benefits the owner almost to the excusion of the workers.
Of course, at the opposite end you find experiments like British Leyland and the decline of Britian as a powerhouse of automotive design and production, where throwing workers at a problem without respect for things like build quality results in truly atrocious products.
If a society has a goal to employ everyone, it is necessary for a ba
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I know plenty of boomers who program too. I also know far far more that I have to show they can use excel for more than just tables but addition, subtraction too
I can't tell you the number of times I have witnessed a baby boomer looking up numbers in excel spreadsheet and then pull out a calculator to modify that number ( calculating cost from a list price etc).
another boomer trait,assuming your life is the rule not the exception. That you and your opinions are the majority not the miniority.
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Nobody is ever bor
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Re: Someone hire them... (Score:5, Insightful)
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The rise and rise of group based discrimination. Cheers to those that push group identities above all else. You know who you are.
millennials?
Motivation is key (Score:5, Insightful)
See? All you need to overcome the most insane obstacles is motivation. Just think of all the things these poor people had to go through to get internet access!
It's kinda humbling.
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And even worse... (Score:5, Funny)
They found a pirate copy of doom on the computers, which is the thing that turned em into criminals.
Hire them (Score:5, Interesting)
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You're forgetting the eating of flesh and sewing skins into clothing. That's when the order in which they are done becomes important.
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Fuck you! I can't decide whether to rape you before or after I kill you! You're getting both raped and killed, in some order!
Death by Oooga Booga.
Wrong meme - death by Snu Snu
If this was a movie... (Score:5, Insightful)
...we would all be mocking it's unrealistic plot.
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..or its unrealistic apostrophe usage.
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...we would all be mocking it's unrealistic plot.
Or bitching about your grammar.
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Why? We already know that back in WW2 neither the Camp Commandant nor his lead Sergeant had the slightest clue that POWs had their bunk beds on slides so they could access their underground radio rooms and secret tunnels. That group of US Army Heroes did an incredible job of spy work and sabotage and never once got caught.
Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
How does an inmate goes about building a computer "from parts" as if you could join copper pipes, rocks and whatnot together and magically transform it into a computer? That's not how it works! xD
Did the inmates have access to electronics recycling centers or something? Were people smuggling RAM chips, CPUs and whatnot inside somehow? This story is so weird...
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Spock could have built one with only stone knives and bearskins.
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Spock could have built one with only stone knives and bearskins.
McGyver wouldn't have needed bearskins, which are hard to get in prison.
Chuck Norris would just have ninja-kicked the cell walls until they collapsed into a computer.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA:
The inmates were able to get the parts from a program where inmates break down computers in order to learn computer skills and recycle the parts.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
The inmates were able to get the parts from a program where inmates break down computers in order to learn computer skills and recycle the parts.
Sounds like the program was successful to me...
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It's good to see that at least one of our prisons is teaching inmates marketable skills that will allow them to earn a decent living once they are released.
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In Florida, my mom's neighbor (who is in her 60s) works part time for a company that de-solders chips and components from old circuit boards for recycling. The company buys electronic waste for cheap (or sometimes is paid to take it), gets a bunch of old retired ladies together, and they all sit around and chat while they work with their hands taking apart old cordless phones, DVD players and other electronics. The company then resells any reusable chips or parts they can harvest. So, there's demand for
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the least of your worries.
Nobody noticed them run cable.
Nobody noticed them tap into the network.
Nobody noticed them sticking things up in ceilings.
Nobody noticed them taking power to run this stuff.
Nobody noticed them using the machine itself.
Nobody noticed them take items from classes they were in.
Nobody noticed them use the system to the extent they could access private information and defraud others.
(Or were prepared to turn a blind eye to ALL the above).
The problem with the prison is NOTHING to do with them being able to get hold a computer. It's being able to get hold of ANYTHING, even things brought deliberately into the prison for them to hold, without people noticing. And then being so unsupervised or unmonitored that they can basically build a damn network with nobody noticing. No surveillance. No tracking of movements. No wondering where they are. No noticing absences for potentially hours at a time.
In that time, they could have done ANYTHING they liked, with a lot worse things than a bit of fraud being possible.
Nobody noticed. Nobody cared. Nobody checked. Nobody counted. Nobody noticed things missing. Or the guards were bribed / threatened to turn a blind eye. That's your problem. Not what they actually got up to.
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Welcome to the Norwegian prison. Here's your Windows 10 laptop!
The fiends!
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I'm also surprised that a high security environment like a prison wouldn't require port authentication on any device connected to its network. They were able to simply plug a new computer into a spare port on a switch and didn't need to enable the port, install a certificate, or anything. That seems especially surprising when it gave them access to the systems used to issue access cards.
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There seems to be an expectation in America that people are supposed to get beaten up, raped and occasionally murdered in prison. That's part of the prison experience, and anything less would be like sending criminals on a taxpayer-funded vacation to Disneyland.
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If that's the problem, then we have pretty light problems. What are the consequences of this problem? Basically nothing.
As far as bad things happening with/at prisons go, this is easy mode.
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Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Like HELL!
Why can you plug into the network at all? (RADIUS, etc.)
Why can you plug in unauthorised devices? (NPS, device management etc.)
Why can you use devices without up-to-date antivirus/firewall etc. (NPS again)
Why do new things plugged in get access to everything and not just a limited VLAN?
Why are you able to then get access to something just by a stolen username/password from an authorised device? (Access controls, I mean come on! At least insist that it's a domain-joined device!)
Why did they not notice until ACCESS WAS ALREADY BEING USED ON THE NETWORK?
It's pathetic.
I work in a primary school (up to age 11) and you wouldn't be able to do that to our systems without alarm bells going off.
In a "secure" environment like a prison, and especially on secure services that can create access cards and open door, the IT department were doing NOTHING LIKE their job.
Literally, a managed switch and a device management software / Windows server set up properly would have stopped 99% of what they did in its tracks and all they'd have was a stolen username/password they could use only at an authorised machine anyway.
You basically handed the prisoners the network on a plate, for virus infection, malware installation, Internet access, system compromise, packet-sniffing, etc.
And you're saying well done because they noticed a whole bunch of suspicious entries in a log after a LONG time of the computer being in a position to do all kinds of damage?
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Re:Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
as if you could join copper pipes, rocks and whatnot together and magically transform it into a computer?
I'm now speculating how an episode of MacGyver set in a prison would have worked out. And the original MacGyver, not the new one who looks like he'd last nanoseconds in prison.
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as if you could join copper pipes, rocks and whatnot together and magically transform it into a computer?
I'm now speculating how an episode of MacGyver set in a prison would have worked out. And the original MacGyver, not the new one who looks like he'd last nanoseconds in prison.
There's a new MacGyver?
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There is, but spare yourself, don't look it up or watch an episode. I have seen one and regret it. I thought it was a rerun when I saw it in the TV guide and started watching. I wish it had been a rerun.
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There's a new MacGyver?
There is a new MacGyver. I loved the original, so I watched part of one new ones. I quickly came to the conclusion that it was made for children. It was ridiculous. Then, reflecting back, I had the revelation that the original was also geared toward children. It was ridiculous too. The difference is that 30 years ago I was a child and Mac was fun. I've aged considerably since then. Most of us have.
Mac wouldn't need to build a spare parts computer. He'd just use his shoelaces and a pulley to bend the bars an
Re: Huh? (Score:2)
Were people smuggling RAM chips, CPUs and whatnot inside somehow?
You finally figured out that "parts of computers" means "computer parts" - no, don't worry; that makes you one of the smarter ones. ;)
what the guy who stole a car one piece at a time? (Score:2)
what the guy who stole a car one piece at a time?
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Of course since most of that wouldn't function without the rest, you could have just saved the money until you could buy it all at once. It would have worked almost the same (unless you bought the case and GPU last and the CPU had on-die graphics).
at fox river you use to just needed to payoff the (Score:2)
at fox river you use to just needed to payoff the guards but then they got a new warden after some guys got out and things changes. But they still have cheap payphones that take coins there.
Sad they lost in TLD lottery. (Score:4, Interesting)
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anyway, no one is using the .us TLD ;-)
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It's typically used for state and county governments. In IL, all public schools get *.k12.il.us domains.
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The Marion Correction Institution is not a privately run prison. It's owned and operated by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Your point may still stand that it's for-profit, but it's not run by some faceless corporation.
Easy enough (Score:2)
You just have to get a VLSI design tattooed on your back.
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credit cards? (Score:4, Interesting)
he just looked through the ODRC system for a young inmate with a long sentence, then used his information to get the cards.
If the bank is giving a credit card to a prison inmate with a long sentence, I feel like there's a moral imperative for someone to take advantage of them, for their own good.
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Credit card companies have access to enough of your personal information. Do you want to give them entire prison databases, too?
Talk about lax security... by design (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF is a prison doing with easily accessible drop ceilings, anyway? That's insane.
Lifelong learning (Score:5, Funny)
The inmates were able to get the parts from a program where inmates break down computers in order to learn computer skills and recycle the parts.
To be fair, it seems that this program was a complete success.
Resume material (Score:3)
Re:Resume material (Score:5, Interesting)
Once you're in prison, I would imagine the bar to increase sentencing is rather high. To increase your sentence, you'd have to go through trial, which means the prison has to file with the DA about crimes you committed in prison. There's a limited amount of discretion on early release, on which the prison wardens can provide input; anything beyond this requires judicial oversight.
Think about it. If you commit a rape or murder in prison, this needs to go to judiciary review. You need due process to examine the evidence. You're in an environment where other inmates can easily create a false image of the situation, and even the administrative staff is under enough obvious stress that trust is limited and personal grudges and abuse are expected. On the other end, every minor infraction doesn't need to become a Federal case; if you steal a fork from the commissary, that warrants disciplinary action, but not necessarily a new extension on your sentence.
This is hijinks. It's extreme hijinks, but it's still just hijinks. The inmate targeted for identity theft has a case against these people; as for their illegal use of the prison network and the entire chain of events involved, that's more of an administrative manner. This is an environment where people steal stuff, break stuff, and get places they don't belong; even beyond that expectation, this was junk hardware with little to no value to anyone, and thus the damages done by its theft are below standing. Such a scale of high-mischief warrants an extremely-long and uncomfortable talking to, and some unfriendly disciplinary measures; it's more amusing than criminal, though, and doesn't warrant an extreme response.
tl;dr: Nobody got stabbed or raped, and there wasn't a riot or break-out; somebody will get yelled at a whole hell of a lot and have their free-time privileges suspended, and that's just fine.
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tl;dr: Nobody got stabbed or raped, and there wasn't a riot or break-out; somebody will get yelled at a whole hell of a lot and have their free-time privileges suspended, and that's just fine.
Or somebody will be reassigned to a cell with someone who will rape them, because that's how "justice" works in America.
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the phoenix foundation is not hiring
Smelly Mobo (Score:3)
I don't want to know how they smuggled in the motherboard.
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You're a killjoy, you know that?
One piece at a time (Score:3)
and it didn't cost them a dime...
Why a PC? (Score:2)
Check out the women restrooms... (Score:3)
Da joint has changed, I tell ya... (Score:2)
In the old days you had to spend weeks filing a spoon into a shiv to take out Big Vinny. Today you hack into his mob family's bank account to get even.
Sounds like your network sucks. (Score:2)
When all you have to do, 24/7 (Score:2)
Identify theft! (Score:2)
Furthermore, "investigators found an inmate used the computers to steal the identify of another inmate
I... eh. Don't care.
Typical usage (Score:2)
"tipped off to a possible problem in July, when their computer network support team got an alert that a computer "exceeded a daily internet usage threshold."
Might want to run a black light over that room, then maybe bleach...
Re:Sweet! (Score:4, Funny)
Don't forget the free sex.
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Ask Hans Reiser.
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Somehow I not excited when I then see show how they get a free education to then work in the computer industry and yet I had to pay for mine.
Sounds like you should seek a refund.
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Damn does nasty criminales. Bad people. Steal a bread once, murder and rape the next day. Jaywalking? Off with their heads! Once a crooked bread eating thief, always guilty! Lest they -may- get some "free" knowledge whereas others had to pay. Yay capitalism!
Re:and we give them a free education (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, I use actual examples to form my opinion of the world.
In my experience, fire is always hot, water is always wet, criminals are always criminals.
--XYZZY--
So you're incapable of nuanced thought. Well done you.
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Yes, I use actual examples to form my opinion of the world.
In my experience, fire is always hot, water is always wet, criminals are always criminals.
--XYZZY--
So you're incapable of nuanced thought. Well done you.
Lots of people are incapable of nuanced thought. See:
"basket of deplorables"
"Trump voters" becomes "racist voters"
"Unable to support Anita Sarkeesian/Brianna Wu/etc" becomes "Misogynist"
Oh, wait, you thought you were capable of nuanced thought? That's actually quite hilarious.
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Really. For one, it's the wrong cable to install in a plenum. . . . . (evil grin)
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If there's structural wood up there then it's not a plenum airspace.
Mind you, in an institutional setting it's usually just easier to mandate that all cabling inside of the building be plenum-rated and all cable used outside be OSP so that there's no question about accidentally using the wrong cable in the wrong place, but that can be kind of pricey and may still require some decisions like where cables cross 30' breezeways in-conduit. Normally you should transition to OSP and back, but in most cases it's
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What in the world did "Raspberry Pi in the bum" mean before??
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