364 Idaho Inmates Hacked Their Prison Tablets For Free Credits (bleepingcomputer.com) 92
According to local Idaho media, 364 inmates across at least five institutions exploited a vulnerability in their prison-issued tablets to assign nearly $225,000 worth of digital credits to their accounts. They were then able to use these credits to buy music and games. Bleeping Computer reports: The hacked tablets have been used at low-security level prisons across the U.S. for a few years now. They've been offered through a partnership between CenturyLink and JPay. Spokespersons for both companies said the vulnerability inmates exploited was identified and fixed. Officials from the Idaho Department of Correction (IDC) said there was no loss of state funds as a result of the hack, as inmates transferred only JPay-managed (fictitious) digital credits to their accounts. Most inmates transferred small amounts of credits to their tablet accounts. JPay said it recovered more than $65,000 worth of digital credits from the 364 inmate accounts. The company has suspended the ability to buy games and music via digital credits on the tablets of offending inmates. Email functionality was left intact, and the company plans to recover the incurred losses.
Good (Score:1)
Good job. Let the prison-industrial complex take it on the chin for once.
Fictitious digital credits... (Score:5, Insightful)
> ...fictitious digital credits...
> ...company plans to recover the losses...
Yes, that should take about a minute since $0 = $0.
E
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Can we keep the Russian Trolls off the site please?
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To listen to music?
Oh, they'll be paid.
Remember where that money goes to!
They'll just add some more time for bad behavior, and make the prisoners work it off for $0.10 an hour after they're back on the low risk unit.
Idaho? Even has a prison? (Score:1, Funny)
What'd they do, steal a spud or two? What the fuck is there to do in Idaho? What kind of name is Idaho for a state anyway? Let's forget about Idaho and talk about Wyoming. What kind of name is Wyoming for a state anyway? Now, Montana. That's a state! And what a name!
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What the fuck is there to do in Idaho?
Drugs. And then what else are police going to do? Only 0.6% of Idaho's population is black, so harassing black people only occupies so much of their time. What's better than the low hanging fruit of drug users, especially in a state that's rabidly anti-pot, lacking even any form of medical marijuana use.
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In case anybody's wondering (Score:5, Insightful)
Tablets in prisons make correctional officers and managers happy. Inmates maintain community ties, they have something to do with their time, and like any privilege that can be taken away it's a tool the administration can use to control behavior.
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Lol, maybe on a single inmate level, when inmate fucks up and gets sent to ad-seg. If they were to try to take them all away at once, there would be riots. thats like when warden williams tried to take everyones tv's away here at HDCC it didnt turn out very well for the institution.
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it's a tool the administration can use to control behavior
I'd mod you up. But Slashdot admins haven't given me any points.
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Hacker has been used as a label for a criminal for multiple decades. Move on, neckbeard, no one cares that hacker meant something different to the 70s MIT AI lab programmers.
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well arent you a bitter old cunt.
Re:Low security indeed! (Score:4, Insightful)
"Allowing internet access to convicted criminals is NEVER a good idea!"
A felony DUI (for example, injuring a passenger while drunk driving, or prior DUI convictions, or their being kids in the car) will easily get you jail time, and deservedly so.
But there is no threat to society in him having access to the internet while serving time.
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But there is no threat to society in him having access to the internet while serving time.
And we're ever so thankful you're not a judge, and your statement has no case law to back it.
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Nope sorry. You are being isolated from the rest of human society, in what should be an educational facility, a reform school for adults (seriously, fail and you do not get out). That means those outside should not have to deal with you in any way at all, not personally and not via the internet. The law should be, no prisoner is allowed to initiate communications with the outside world and can only receive communications from the outside world.
They all should have the exact same access to content, no one g
Re:Low security indeed! (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly it sounds like you're trying to reconcile an intellectual desire to rehabilitate with an emotional desire to inflict punishment. Everything you suggested depriving inmates of makes rehab much less possible, as does that being the only content available. Not to mention the soul crushing level of supervision and restriction that would be required to have a go at your 'zero crime' fantasy that seems to include the trivial like this story. The prison system you're advocating will leave people so dehumanized and demoralized that all the rehabilitation programs in the world won't prevent the sky high recidivism when they get out and act like the animals you treated them like.
Have a look at the statistics, at what types of prisons result in the lowest recidivism: it's the ones that treat inmates like humans, and offer priveleges like entertainment access, computer/internet access, and keep them integrated with their families and community. Taking all that away and replacing it with nothing but edu/rehab games/movies/programs around the clock is sadistic and trying to call it a 'reform school' is an ironic joke.
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I agree, when I was in(not for a crime as petty nor as safe as DUI) I was in there with DUI offenders. 3rd dui = manditory 1 year in prison in nevada. I felt bad for most of those guys. They were completely out of their element there. And it has to be rough mentally. There are things that you see there that you can never unsee. Things they would never have seen otherwise. Sometimes they even get caught up in some bullshit and end up getting fucked over or worse beaten raw because they dont understand the en
Re:Low security indeed! (Score:4, Insightful)
Since these are low security prisons, prisoners should be allowed to watch TV in several lounges, listen to an AM/FM radio in their cells, and use a land-line phone for a few minutes a day. Other than that, they should have access to carefully selected books, and newspapers. No internet access at all, not even email.
Allowing internet access to convicted criminals is NEVER a good idea!
Email is the modern replacement for snail mail so prisoners should have some access to it. However all their emails, except to and from their lawyers, should be monitored.
For maximum security prisons, prisoners should get a few minutes a week on a land-line phone.
Also you seem to have missed all the exploitative practices regarding prison supplied phone services
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Since these are low security prisons, prisoners should be allowed to watch TV on their tablets, listen to internet radio in their cells, and use a cell phone whenever they want. Other than that, they should have access to any books, and newspapers they want. 24 hour internet access, especially email. For maximum security prisons, prisoners should get the same.
Allowing internet access to convicted criminals is ALWAYS a good idea!
FTFY, you fascist asshole.
$17 for a 15-minute local phone call (Score:5, Insightful)
$17 for a 15-minute local phone call it about time for rates to come down.
They did (Score:2, Troll)
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No internet access at all, not even email. For maximum security prisons, prisoners should get a few minutes a week on a land-line phone.
Nonsense. Social interaction decreases recidivism. It should be encouraged. Nearly all of these people are going to reenter society someday.
If it's funny money can we drop the $ signs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If it's funny money can we drop the $ signs (Score:5, Informative)
It looks like this whole system is a scam to suck money from the inmates. Probably very high charges for pad rental, email, games, etc. Good to see them striking back to free the system.
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Re: If it's funny money can we drop the $ signs (Score:1)
You provided no reason for your list of 4 things prison âshouldâ do. You just said it.
I should it âoeshouldâ just be about #2 and #4. Iâ(TM)m providing as much objective reasoning as you did. (none at all).
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You also provide no sense. You should it should?
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America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. We imprison 4 times as many people per capita as China, Russia, and Iran. We spend the most, yet we have one of the worst recidivism rates.
Unless someone is a physical danger to society, there should be an alternative punishment, such as wearing an ankle tracker while cleaning bedpans at a nursing home for 60 hours per week. We could cut our inmate population by 75%.
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Some things you missed:
- generate profits
- give puritanical nutbags a hard-on
Re: If it's funny money can we drop the $ signs (Score:3)
Re: If it's funny money can we drop the $ signs (Score:2)
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If you seriously think that's a problem (it isn't, and you're an idiot for thinking it) then the solution is easy.
A universal basic income. guaranteed housing, and free healthcare will utterly eliminate that motivation.
And those are things we should do anyway.
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That's what we joke about in the UK. In prison, by law, all cells must be heated to a comfortable temperature, and the food provided must accommodate religious beliefs. In the rea lworld, pensioners have to choose between heating their homes and getting proper nutrition.
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the whole thing makes it seem like they did something horrible, when all they did was game the system to get some more games and music to pass the time with. I'm not opposed to that either. Prison shouldn't be about punishment, it should either be about containment (e.g. folks so dangerous we can't have them running the streets) or reform. Anything else is just sadism.
I agree with the sentiment. Our prison systems are more about crushing the person rather than containment or reform.
I would actually think that this incident should provide an opportunity to gauge these inmates' skills and see if we can use that energy towards giving them additional skills (and help them reform and reintegrate into society with a chance to get a job.)
Re: If it's funny money can we drop the $ signs (Score:2)
https://boingboing.net/2018/07... [boingboing.net]
Here's the scam. From Cory Doctorow
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Criminals steal stuff. Surprise! (Score:2)
So they gave tablets with weak security to inmates at a prison.
And the tablets had a mechanism to buy services - music, games, etc.
And 364 convicts broke the security and stole services - an average of $618 worth each, as much as $11,000 in one case.
Why is this surprising?
Re: Criminals steal stuff. Surprise! (Score:2, Informative)
Not even just weak security, try *no* security. Apparently the app that provides the services to the inmates stored both the item prices and the inmates account balance in a SQLite database stored ON THE DEVICE ITSELF, and the app didn't check a central server to verify transactions.
Fucking amateur hour.
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Good for them (Score:1)
Crime Stopper (Score:3, Funny)
All prisoners should be forced to read random Facebook posts and Twitter feeds
all day. Recidivists must also watch all Trending vids on youtube.
So, tough guy, are you really sure you want to hold up that liquor store?
Jobs in IT Security, anyone? (Score:2)