Shawn Carpenter Book Report

858 Words2 Pages

The case of Shawn Carpenter is almost indistinguishable to the case of Clifford Stoll. In 1986, Stoll was employed by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Department of Energy as the system administrator. A slight mistake in accounting forced him to investigate further. According to Gawn, (1990) Stoll used non-ethical procedures to gain the information, which helped him to identify the hacker as Markus Hess. Hess was selling sensitive information, such as passwords, to the KGB. He also tried to hack the U.S. military.

Just alike Carpenter, Stoll was working on his own for almost one year, because the Lawrence Laboratory did not take him seriously. He passed the information to the U.S. Government, but once again, he did not get any help. …show more content…

This book made him worldwide famous, he is an expert in security, give talk for the CIA, NSA and the U.S. Senate (LeighBureauLtd, 2016). Both, Carpenter and Stoll, were concerned about the national security. However, while Stoll became worldwide famous, Carpenter was punished and lost his job.

As already mentioned, all countries must be prepared for the possibility of cyber conflict, because once the sensitive information such as national security information has been stolen by hackers from foreign country, society is in danger.

Against all expectation, when Sandia laboratories, an expert in global security have been informed about the serious attacks, they decided to pretend that nothing has happened. There was no official report written and Sandia withhold the crucial information. In my opinion, this decision could affect not only Sandia Laboratories and their employees, but the whole …show more content…

He stood all the pressure and threats from the management of Sandia Laboratories. On the other hand, according to Thornburg, (2005) the company policy of Sandia prohibits their employees to share the sensitive information obtained at work. Moreover, the same company policy prohibits sharing the sensitive information obtained from the personal discoveries. Thus, Carpenter had more choices to decide whether investigate breaches on his own or not.

Carpenter was paid by Sandia; he was not a freelance reverse-hacker. Perhaps he should not get excited about the discovered information, which was not linked to Sandia Laboratories anyway. Maybe he should adhere the company rules and drop the case, just as he was told by the management. If Carpenter followed the company rules, there would not be a prosecution and he would not have lost his job. At the end, Carpenter was computer professional and he was aware of the fact, that hacking (without a permission) is against the U.S. law. Despite of his knowledge, he decided to investigate

Open Document