Two California men are facing 20 years in prison on charges they hacked into a California state university's PeopleSoft system to change their grades.
In an October 25 grand jury indictment, John Escalera, 29, and Gustavo Razo, 28, were charged with using Escalera's position within California State University, Fresno's IT help desk center to gain access to the university's grades database.
The men could face 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines if convicted of the eleven counts on the indictment, which includes charges of unauthorized computer access, identity theft, conspiracy, and wire fraud.
Though they are charged with identity theft, a university spokeswoman could not immediately say whether or not sensitive information such as social security numbers had been compromised during the crime.
According to the indictment, Escalera used "computer hacking techniques" to acquire the password of a supervisor and then used this account to get access to 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.
Escalera allegedly obtained user name and passwords for the university's registrar, extension academic program registrar, academic records coordinator, and others, and used these passwords to bump up his own grades as well as those of his friend, Razo, who paid cash for the grade change.
The grades were changed several times between January and June of 2004, the indictment states.
The university had recently updated to PeopleSoft from a legacy system known as the Student Information Management System/Relational database, and IT staff finally caught wind of the problem during a routine audit designed to check the accuracy of the conversion.
This whitepaper explains the terminology and concepts behind Data Replication technologies and establishes some sizing rules through worked examples. Learn the new paradigm in disaster tolerance—protect data anywhere.
Download now »
Server virtualization is a popular option for dealing with mounting datacenter costs. Another equally promising approach is the use of an Application Delivery Controller. Citrix NetScaler provides a low-cost way for organizations to reduce their server count and accrue cost savings from a reduction in space, cooling, power and personnel.
Download now »
The emergence of WLANs has created a new breed of security threats to enterprise networks.
Included in HP ProCurve WLAN solutions is security technology that alleviates threats from WLANs through:
* Monitoring wireless activity inside and out of the enterprise
* Classifying WLAN transmissions into harmful and harmless
* Preventing transmissions that pose a security threat to the enterprise network
* Locating participating devices for physical remediation
Effectively address data protection challenges, implementing solutions that help store and protect business–critical data while cutting costs and improving efficiency and reliability.
Download now »
Sign up to receive Security Resource Alerts
This white paper provides guidance on how to develop a strategic approach to managing and monitoring logs, a key function required for compliance with many regulatory mandates and a critical defense against security threats.
Download now! »
Learn about the processes and technologies that support security information management (SIM) operations, as well as the business case for SIM. The series examines different options for implementing SIM and gives you evaluation criteria for selecting the best option for your organization.
Download now! »
Learn the strategies, actions, and capabilities that Best-in-Class organizations employ and technologies they choose to obtain superior performance against various security performance metrics. This report provides guidelines for identifying which security solutions to consume as a MSS and defines best practices for choosing and managing MSSPs.
Download now! »
Recommend This
