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Tufts expelled a student for grade hacking. She claims innocence
As she sat in the airport with a one-way ticket in her hand, Tiffany Filler wondered how she would pick up the pieces of her life, with tens of thousands of dollars in student debt and nothing to show for it.
A day earlier, she was expelled from Tufts University veterinary school. As a Canadian, her visa was no longer valid and she was told by the school to leave the U.S. “as soon as possible.” That night, her plane departed the U.S. for her native Toronto, leaving any prospect of her becoming a veterinarian behind.
Filler, 24, was accused of an elaborate months-long scheme involving stealing and using university logins to break into the student records system, view answers, and alter her own and other students’ grades.
The case Tufts presented seems compelling, if not entirely believable.
There’s just one problem: In almost every instance that the school accused Filler of hacking, she was elsewhere with proof of her whereabouts or an eyewitness account and without the laptop she’s accused of using. She has alibis: fellow students who testified to her whereabouts; photos with metadata putting her miles away at the time of the alleged hacks; and a sleep tracker that showed she was asleep during others.
[...] Tufts said she stole a librarian’s password to assign a mysteriously created user account, “Scott Shaw,” with a higher level of system and network access. Filler allegedly used it to look up faculty accounts and reset passwords by swapping out the email address to one she’s accused of controlling, or in some cases obtaining passwords and bypassing the school’s two-factor authentication system by exploiting a loophole that simply didn’t require a second security check, which the school has since fixed.
Tufts accused Filler of using this extensive system access to systematically log in as “Scott Shaw” to obtain answers for tests, taking the tests under her own account, said to be traced from either her computer — based off a unique identifier, known as a MAC address — and the network she allegedly used, either the campus’s wireless network or her off-campus residence. When her grades went up, sometimes other students’ grades went down, the school said.
In other cases, she’s alleged to have broken into the accounts of several assessors in order to alter existing grades or post entirely new ones.
The bulk of the evidence came from Tufts’ IT department, which said each incident was “well supported” from log files and database records. The evidence pointed to her computer over a period of several months, the department told the committee.
[...] A month later, the committee served a unanimous vote that Filler was the hacker and recommended her expulsion.
[...] Many accounts were breached as part of this apparent elaborate scheme to alter grades, but there is no evidence Tufts hired any forensics experts to investigate.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 10 2019, @04:15PM (9 children)
Veterinarian hacker? I have liked almost all the vets I've ever met. As a group, they are pretty great people. Most of them share a number of characteristics - love of nature, love of animals, empathy, compassion - the list goes on. They are a type of people who usually aren't especially technical. They aren't exactly the STEM kind of people to whom hacking comes naturally.
Further, this hack seems awfully sophisticated. The typical vet who took an interest in hacking probably isn't going to be this sophisticated.
Of course, we can't expect the staff of a university to take human nature into account, can we? Certainly not in this day and age. Hell, someone probably accuse me of racism and sexism for suggesting that a veterinarian wouldn't be a first choice if you were looking for a hacker.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 10 2019, @05:09PM (3 children)
The theory is probably that she paid someone to do it for her. She is admittedly capable of outsourcing tech tasks. From the article: "She paid for someone through freelance marketplace Fiverr to scan her computer."
Tufts isn't stupid and it's unlikely they would have expelled Filler without damning evidence. The university has lawyers and would expect a suit on the student's part. Defending against such a lawsuit would be expensive and time consuming, so my guess is that Tufts is keeping the evidence in their back pocket hoping that a guilty conscience and fear of being proven a liar in court will dissuade FIller from taking it any further.
It's easy to complain to the media, but much harder to make a case in a courtroom when all of the card are on the table.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Sunday March 10 2019, @06:10PM (2 children)
If she paid someone to do it, why would they use her laptop rather than hacking some other student's laptop?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 10 2019, @06:25PM (1 child)
Because they needed a university entry point and she could provide one.
No one is claiming that she hired world class talent. Caveat emptor.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Sunday March 10 2019, @06:52PM
With all the poorly configured student laptops plus public use library computers, it seems at least as likely that she *IS* one of those other students with a poorly configured laptop.
If I was a hacker with no ethics hired to change someone's grades, I would have the client plug a USB key into someone else's laptop, install a RAT, and change their grades too.
(Score: 4, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday March 10 2019, @05:24PM (4 children)
You sexist racist literally Hitler!
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 10 2019, @06:37PM (3 children)
ROFL at your post, and ROFLMAO at the moderator who didn't think you were funny.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 10 2019, @08:21PM (2 children)
Triggered much?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 10 2019, @08:35PM
Troll much?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday March 10 2019, @10:03PM
You really don't know what "triggered" means, do you? Sadface emoji.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.