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Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node

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989 points heavyset_go | 1 comments | 16 Sep 25 12:10 UTC | HN request time: 0.317s | source
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tptacek ◴[16 Sep 25 13:26 UTC] No.45261951[source]▶
For whatever it's worth, the Reddit story here says that the federal courts used "fraudulent warrants to jail my husband again". Maybe! The other side of that story, via PACER, is a detailed parole violation warrant (you can hear the marshal refer to it in the video); the violations in that warrant:

1. Admitting to using cannabis during supervised release

2. Failing to make scheduled restitution payments and to cooperate with the financial investigation that sets restitution payment amounts.

3. Falling out of contact with his probation officer, who attempted home visits to find him.

4. Opening several new lines of credit.

5. Using an unauthorized iPhone (all his Internet devices apparently have keyloggers as a condition of his release).

These read like kind of standard parole terms? I don't know what the hell happened to get him into this situation in the first place, though.

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tptacek ◴[16 Sep 25 13:33 UTC] No.45262053[source]▶
OK, I think I found the original thing Rockenhaus was convicted of.

Back in 2014, Rockenhaus worked for a travel booking company. He was fired. He used stale VPN access to connect back to the company's infrastructure, and then detached a SCSI LUN from the server cluster, crashing it. The company, not knowing he was involved, retained him to help diagnose and fix the problem. During the investigation, the company figured out he caused the crash, and terminated him again. He then somehow gained access to their disaster recovery facility and physically fucked up a bunch of servers. They were down a total of about 30 days and incurred $500k in losses.

(He plead this case out, so these are I guess uncontested claims).

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kstrauser ◴[16 Sep 25 14:00 UTC] No.45262386[source]▶
Good grief. This is also part of the reason why I have a pact with my coworkers: if I’m terminated, kill my access immediately and universally, and I’ll do the same for them. I don’t even want to have the ability to look at stuff anymore. Remove any shred of possibility that I could get into shenanigans later.
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everforward ◴[16 Sep 25 14:24 UTC] No.45262671[source]▶
I also follow the closely related addendum: I do not want standing admin access to your system, unless I need it often enough it really impacts my productivity. Doubly so if it's not hooked up to SSO. If the database gets breached, I don't want my name on the list of people who had the admin password.

Most big businesses are good about that, but I've helped a couple family members with their business' WordPress and just have standing access that I really don't want. They don't want to juggle activating/de-activating my account though, so /shrug.

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1. kstrauser ◴[16 Sep 25 14:37 UTC] No.45262869[source]▶
Same all around for me. I have a couple of longstanding accounts on local businesses I help out, but it’s all via VPNs that send the owner an email when I connect. I also refuse to do any work unless they ask me in writing. Text is OK, and I screenshot it. “Why did you give such-and-such rights to that employee?” “I have it in writing where the owner asked me to, Your Honor.”

This has never come up before, but it’s easy enough to be diligent about it.

Also: I keep a little paper notebook where I log the work I do for everyone, and occasionally have someone else sign and date it. It’s basically a cheap blockchain IRL. “How do you know you did this before you stopped doing work for them?” “Because the owner signed and dated the logbook after I did the work but before they hired the new IT person.”

I’m suuuuuper nitpicky about diligence in all this, for the protection of everyone involved, and especially me.