Business - Written Tuesday, September 30, 2008 by Jeff DeChambeau - 5 Comments

When being open isn’t your choice

Carleton University has been in the news lately for being the victim of a hacking attack. Erm, more accurately, Carleton has been in the news for having a student, Mansour Moufid, identify a serious security flaw in the Carleton Campus Card, which enabled him access to the email passwords of 32 of his fellow students. Moufid then wrote a report on how he was able to breach the school’s security, and snail mailed it to the school’s security department, who ignored him (says Moufid).

Ten days after mailing the physical copy of the report to Carleton, Moufid emailed the 32 students whose accounts had been completely compromised, and informed them that the school had been made aware of the attack on security, and had decided to ignore it. One of the students happened to be an intern at a CBC newsroom, and her supervisor found the story to be interesting — it grew from there. Carleton said that they only received the package the same day that Moufid emailed the 32 students, leaving them with no time to do anything at all. Continue…