Tech Shout!

Finally here’s a reason for me to feel less guilty for having sneaked into my partner’s paper during my Class V test!

Two California students, who had been accused of hacking into a California state university’s PeopleSoft system to alter their grades, may now end up facing 20 years of imprisonment each.

The two students named John Escalera, 29, and Gustavo Razo, 28 were charged with using Escalera’s position inside the California State University, Fresno’s IT help desk center, in order to gain access to the university’s grades database. This grand jury indictment was announced on October 25th.

Escalera and Razo have eleven counts on the order, which includes quite a few grave student crimes such as illegal computer access, identity theft, conspiracy and wire fraud. In the event of the two being convicted, then along with the 20 years of imprisonment, they would be ordered to pay US$250,000

It is yet unclear if during the act the California students have got their hands on any sensitive data such as social security numbers and manhandled them subsequently.

As per the order issued, Escalera used “computer hacking techniques” to get hold of the password of a supervisor, after which he used this account to acquire the usernames and passwords used by the university’s Web-based PeopleSoft academic record system, hosted at a Unisys data center in Salt Lake City, Utah. PeopleSoft products are sold by Oracle.

Razo paid Escalara cash for the grade change. In order to boost his and Razo’s grades, Escalara apparently got hold of the user name and passwords of his supervisor to gain access to some of the university’s most sensitive data banks.

The indictment further states that the grades have been changed a number of times between January and June 2004.

Now perhaps the only credentials that would appear on their curriculum-vitae would be their jail records!