Don’t hack your way through life

PETER BUFFA

Cybercrime. It’s nasty, it’s serious, and last week, it was here --

rearing its ugly little binary head at Corona del Mar High School.

At 11:30 Monday morning, Newport Beach police showed up at the

high school and arrested a junior of the male variety for allegedly

clicking where he shouldn’t have been clicking -- namely, the

school’s database.

According to Jane Garland, a spokeswoman for the Newport-Mesa

Unified School District, since January, the grades of a number of

students, including the teen whose Monday morning was ruined, had

been changed -- for the better.

The district alerted Newport Beach police, who have a

sophisticated cybercrime unit, and as quick as you could hit the

enter key -- they had their hacker.

This is serious stuff, by the way, and it gets more serious all

the time, which may explain why the young man arrested on suspicion

of the crime Monday may face felony charges. Those who equate

computer cracking with a little cyber mischief would be shocked to

learn what the costs of restoring a compromised network or database.

The student-hacker at Corona del Mar High and his extra-credit

project are one more cautionary tale about computers and the

Internet. Let’s call it “Home Alone, Not Really.”

I will never get over the power and potential of the Internet. The

total sum of information in the world, every last bit of it -- from

the most important to the most trivial, from the ridiculous to the

sublime, the good and the bad, is at your fingertips.

If you can imagine a fact, you can find it on the Internet -- from

Zasu Pitts’ social security number, to what the current exhibit in

Rome’s Borghese Gallery is, to what pork bellies did Friday (they

were up.)

It really is a mind-boggling window on the world, especially when

you can peek through it in the privacy of your own home, office or

wherever -- which is exactly how most hackers get nabbed. The feeling

of solitude and stealth is so strong and seductive that it’s easy to

forget that while you’re peeking at the world through that screen,

the world is peeking back at you from the other side.

No matter how stealthy you are, every move you make and every

click you take in cyberspace is being tracked and followed and

recorded, somewhere, somehow.

Can anyone count of the number of nincompoops who have been caught

sending threatening or hateful messages via e-mail? I can’t. You can

find “anonymous e-mail” in exactly the same folder as jumbo shrimp,

relative stranger and Amtrak schedule.

The high school hacker fits the profile of hackers around the

world -- young, male, above-average intelligence, and obviously, very

computer-savvy.

If you think the cybercops in Newport Beach have been busy, you

should see them in Germany. The latest global virus, called Sasser,

was launched two months ago, and last week, German police showed up

at the door of an 18-year old they’ve identified only as “Sven J” in

Lower Saxony, which is just like Upper Saxony, only lower. Before

Sven and Sasser were done, they wreaked havoc on computer networks at

Delta Air Lines, the British Royal Coast Guard and the European

Commission in Brussels. According to German authorities, Sven J said

he hadn’t really considered the damage his virus could cause.

Yeah. I’m sure.

One encouraging aspect of the Corona del Mar cybercaper was the

reaction of some of the other students.

“I think it was really stupid, said CdM freshman Jessika Kelly in

this week’s Pilot. “Why don’t you just study for a test? If you cheat

you won’t learn anything.”

You go, Jessika. I want you to work on your spelling a little bit,

but you are definitely on the right page of life.

“It’s shocking,” said another freshman, Amber Peck. “Why don’t you

just study instead of changing your grades? And then you don’t have

to worry about being caught.”

Was my head screwed on that straight at that age? I don’t know. I

wasn’t into the cheating thing, but when it came to studying, if

there was any way out of it, I’d find it.

There were no computers at the time, other than Univac, which took

up a large warehouse, required a team of people with clipboards in

white coats, and had about one one-thousandth the computing power of

my electronic Rolodex.

I don’t remember any big deal cheating scandals to speak of, of

course none of us would have dared dream of tampering with records,

let alone tried it. Keep in mind this was eight years of Irish nuns

and four years of Jesuits.

Somebody would get caught glancing at someone else’s paper now and

then. A nun or a priest, sometimes one of each, would work them over

like Rocky Balboa on a speed bag, and that was that. It was never a

problem for me, not because I was any better, but because I had the

eyesight of a lemur.

A paper on the next desk was as good as in the next classroom to

me. So the advice hasn’t changed, even after all these years.

Do your own work, keep your eyes on your desk, and listen to

Jessika and Amber. I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs

Sundays. He may be reached by e-mail at [email protected].