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I'm surprised to see this is a prison term kind of situation. We're talking about the choice of an algorithm in a spreadsheet delivered by a contractor being a

by CPLX 7y ago

I'm surprised to see this is a prison term kind of situation. We're talking about the choice of an algorithm in a spreadsheet delivered by a contractor being a criminal offense. It's not like that's impossible but it seems a lot more like a contractual issue at first glance. I mean fundamentally it's a string of ones and zeros, it's a piece of software. What if he says that it was his policy to put an expiration into all his software deliverables? How is this, as a criminal legal matter different from a company that disables a piece of software without a support contract in place, or similar? It seems a lot like a contractual issue, a discrepancy between what he delivered and what they expected, with monetary damages as the legal remedy. What am I missing here? EDIT: Upon reading a little more about it it's a Federal charge, which seems even more insane. I can't find the actual complaint to see if it's a CFAA charge but it looks that way. This looks a lot like yet another case of "person vs. giant multinational billion plus dollar company" on a computer issue, which means massive Federal charges for some reason, along the lines of Sergey Aleynikov, Aaron Schwartz, or Weev.

paulsutter 7y ago
Sabotage is sabotage, doesn’t matter how it’s deliveted
sideshowb 7y ago
> What if he says that it was his policy to put an expiration into all his software deliverables? If he says that in his contract, and the expiration process is written to do something honest like pop up a dialog saying "you need to renew your license" then I can't see there being a problem with that. It sounds like there was malicious intent, however, if the contract didn't specify expiration and the expiration is intentionally designed to look like a fault rather than an expiration. Of course multi-million dollar companies do at times get away with built-in obsolescence... be great if this set a precedent regarding all the smartphones that mysteriously become unusable after 2 years...
jsty 7y ago
IANAL It looks like he was hired as a contractor to work on their internal systems (i.e. the spreadsheet) rather than licensing a product to them. If as is likely the bank owned the spreadsheet, he's purposefully modified it without permission to malfunction after a certain date - that's why it would be a criminal matter, he's been told "you can access these internal systems to incorporate functionality x", and has additionally gone in and planted malicious functionality. When you license software that disables functionality without a current license, it's legal because you have no right to use that software without the license. If you own the copyright to some software and someone you'd hired to work on it goes and sneaks in a logic bomb to make themselves indispensable, I think you have every right to be pretty peeved.
- CPLX 7y ago
  > the bank owned the spreadsheet, he's purposefully modified it without permission to malfunction after a certain date - that's why it would be a criminal matter Indeed. That's an excellent point, if true.
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  > he's purposefully modified it without permission to malfunction after a certain date - that's why it would be a criminal matter It is more than that. He purposefully modified it to expire in a time frame and in a method other developers would fine unreasonable and did so for personal profits. Then he took advantage of that modification. Most the software I make has a problem in it when we reach the year 10,000AD. But we would all agree that is a reasonable issue that I shouldn't be found liable (it would be a massive achievement to even be remembered as a footnote come 10,000AD).
wyldfire 7y ago
> David Tinley, 52, pled guilty before U.S. District Judge Peter J. Phipps to one count of intentionally damaging a protected computer In fact it was CFAA: 18 USC § 1030. > The case is U.S. v. Tinley, case number 2:19-cr-00156, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. [1] https://www.law360.com/commercialcontracts/articles/1180318/after-delay-pa-programmer-pleads-to-siemens-sabotage https://www.law360.com/commercialcontracts/articles/1180318/...
dmd 7y ago
> We're talking about the choice of an algorithm in a spreadsheet delivered by a contractor being a criminal offense. ... I mean fundamentally it's a string of ones and zeros, it's a piece of software. You can reduce anything like that. Shooting a person? How can that be a crime? Fundamentally, it's just atoms. How can atoms be illegal? All they've done is move them from one place to another. Outcomes are what matter.
- LinuxBender 7y ago
  > Outcomes are what matter. More specifically, intent.
  - vinniejames 7y ago
    More concisely, culpability
3xblah 7y ago
"I can't find the actual complaint to see if it's a CFAA charge but it looks that way." https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/06/25/tinley-siemens-logic-bomb.pdf https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/06/25/tinley-siemens-logic-bomb.... Have federal prosecutors filed any CFAA complaints on behalf of individual consumers. For example someone who has lost over $5K in one year as a result of planned obsolescence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
Pigo 7y ago
I've worked with a lot of people who could be charged with creating logic bombs in everything they touch. I guess the difference is they were creating them out of ignorance. But the end result was the same, since the company would begin to see them as a necessary resource.
houzertuch 7y ago
Child porn is a string of ones and zeros. So are death threats and nuclear weapon schematics.
thefifthsetpin 7y ago
In this case is that he bet that the company's stocks would go down when his bomb went off. He's not the last person who will realize that the market can be manipulated by sabotage. It seems important that the penalties for trying that outweigh the potential benefits.
sdinsn 7y ago
> I mean fundamentally it's a string of ones and zeros, it's a piece of software. Do you apply that same logic to other software, such as Malware?
rtkwe 7y ago
> We're talking about the choice of an algorithm in a spreadsheet delivered by a contractor being a criminal offense. It's not like that's impossible but it seems a lot more like a contractual issue at first glance. I mean fundamentally it's a string of ones and zeros, it's a piece of software. That's not what we're really talking about. He intentionally added in a failure to the software he delivered and then charged them to 'fix' the issue i.e. reset the trigger to happen at a later date and charged them for the 'fix'. Seems like a pretty straight forward fraud charge.

by CPLX 7y ago

paulsutter 7y ago

Sabotage is sabotage, doesn’t matter how it’s deliveted

sideshowb 7y ago

> What if he says that it was his policy to put an expiration into all his software deliverables? If he says that in his contract, and the expiration process is written to do something honest like pop up a dialog saying "you need to renew your license" then I can't see there being a problem with that. It sounds like there was malicious intent, however, if the contract didn't specify expiration and the expiration is intentionally designed to look like a fault rather than an expiration. Of course multi-million dollar companies do at times get away with built-in obsolescence... be great if this set a precedent regarding all the smartphones that mysteriously become unusable after 2 years...

jsty 7y ago

IANAL It looks like he was hired as a contractor to work on their internal systems (i.e. the spreadsheet) rather than licensing a product to them. If as is likely the bank owned the spreadsheet, he's purposefully modified it without permission to malfunction after a certain date - that's why it would be a criminal matter, he's been told "you can access these internal systems to incorporate functionality x", and has additionally gone in and planted malicious functionality. When you license software that disables functionality without a current license, it's legal because you have no right to use that software without the license. If you own the copyright to some software and someone you'd hired to work on it goes and sneaks in a logic bomb to make themselves indispensable, I think you have every right to be pretty peeved.

CPLX 7y ago
> the bank owned the spreadsheet, he's purposefully modified it without permission to malfunction after a certain date - that's why it would be a criminal matter Indeed. That's an excellent point, if true.
SkyBelow 7y ago
> he's purposefully modified it without permission to malfunction after a certain date - that's why it would be a criminal matter It is more than that. He purposefully modified it to expire in a time frame and in a method other developers would fine unreasonable and did so for personal profits. Then he took advantage of that modification. Most the software I make has a problem in it when we reach the year 10,000AD. But we would all agree that is a reasonable issue that I shouldn't be found liable (it would be a massive achievement to even be remembered as a footnote come 10,000AD).

wyldfire 7y ago

> David Tinley, 52, pled guilty before U.S. District Judge Peter J. Phipps to one count of intentionally damaging a protected computer In fact it was CFAA: 18 USC § 1030. > The case is U.S. v. Tinley, case number 2:19-cr-00156, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. [1] https://www.law360.com/commercialcontracts/articles/1180318/after-delay-pa-programmer-pleads-to-siemens-sabotage https://www.law360.com/commercialcontracts/articles/1180318/...

dmd 7y ago

> We're talking about the choice of an algorithm in a spreadsheet delivered by a contractor being a criminal offense. ... I mean fundamentally it's a string of ones and zeros, it's a piece of software. You can reduce anything like that. Shooting a person? How can that be a crime? Fundamentally, it's just atoms. How can atoms be illegal? All they've done is move them from one place to another. Outcomes are what matter.

LinuxBender 7y ago
> Outcomes are what matter. More specifically, intent.
- vinniejames 7y ago
  More concisely, culpability

3xblah 7y ago

"I can't find the actual complaint to see if it's a CFAA charge but it looks that way." https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/06/25/tinley-siemens-logic-bomb.pdf https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/06/25/tinley-siemens-logic-bomb.... Have federal prosecutors filed any CFAA complaints on behalf of individual consumers. For example someone who has lost over $5K in one year as a result of planned obsolescence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

Pigo 7y ago

I've worked with a lot of people who could be charged with creating logic bombs in everything they touch. I guess the difference is they were creating them out of ignorance. But the end result was the same, since the company would begin to see them as a necessary resource.

houzertuch 7y ago

Child porn is a string of ones and zeros. So are death threats and nuclear weapon schematics.

thefifthsetpin 7y ago

In this case is that he bet that the company's stocks would go down when his bomb went off. He's not the last person who will realize that the market can be manipulated by sabotage. It seems important that the penalties for trying that outweigh the potential benefits.

sdinsn 7y ago

> I mean fundamentally it's a string of ones and zeros, it's a piece of software. Do you apply that same logic to other software, such as Malware?

rtkwe 7y ago

> We're talking about the choice of an algorithm in a spreadsheet delivered by a contractor being a criminal offense. It's not like that's impossible but it seems a lot more like a contractual issue at first glance. I mean fundamentally it's a string of ones and zeros, it's a piece of software. That's not what we're really talking about. He intentionally added in a failure to the software he delivered and then charged them to 'fix' the issue i.e. reset the trigger to happen at a later date and charged them for the 'fix'. Seems like a pretty straight forward fraud charge.