Former ECE student charged with hacking professor’s account

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.dailyillini.com/news/campus/article_1a22475e-66ab-11e2-b767-0019bb30f31a.html

By Carina Lee
Staff writer
The Daily Illini
January 25, 2013

Sung Dan Lee, senior in Engineering, had been expecting to take his Electrical 
and Computer Engineering 329 class exam Nov. 29 at 7 p.m. But when he received 
an unexpected email with the subject “ECE 329 Exam 3 Solutions for Sale,” he 
became suspicious.

The email stated: “Sales stop at 17:57 CST, and all keys are distributed at 
18:02 CST. You will be refunded if some white knight snitches to the damn 
professors...but we can all cooperate, amrite? ;-)”

Police are charging Daniel Beckwitt, a former University student, with sending 
this illicit email and others in a string of hacks that became attributed to 
one “ECE Hacker.” University police officers arrested Beckwitt last Friday at 
his home in Urbana. He appeared in court Tuesday, where he was formally charged 
with five counts: property damage, two counts of computer fraud, tampering with 
documents and illegally possessing a firearm. His next court appearance is 
scheduled for Feb. 5.

“I thought these incidents only happen in the movies and couldn’t believe that 
it could actually happen in one of my classes,” Lee said. “We were like ‘Maybe 
this guy was too scared to take the exam,’ and that was why he did such 
things.”

[...]

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