Comment on An engineer bought a prison laptop on eBay. Then 1,200 incarcerated students lost their devices.
PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world 8 months agoCalling it a security breach is a bit of a stretch, to be fair. The company that issued them never changed the default BIOS password, so inmates could gain admin control over them if they wanted. Changing default passwords is like the most basic Help Desk 1 training.
I can almost guarantee that the company is owned by someone who also has direct ties to the prison’s leadership, and they spun up the corporation just to issue (and profit from) the laptops. Because there’s no way that an experienced IT team would allow 1200 laptops to walk out the door with default passwords.
LazaroFilm@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Having root access to that computer means they can do a lot of throngs they aren’t supposed to. I fail to see this as anything but a security breach for this.
pupbiru@aussie.zone 8 months ago
i’d say that it’s a security vulnerability, but breach implies it’s been used
LazaroFilm@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I see. That makes sense.