this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
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Zhang, an electrical engineer in Boston, decided to post about trying to unlock his Justice Tech Solutions Securebook 5 on the social platform X. The thread went viral — also catching the attention of Washington corrections officials, who have used the device for college programming since 2020.

Of particular concern was an article about Zhang’s thread published on a hacker website that shared the default password for the underlying software that starts the laptop’s operating system, presenting what the Department of Corrections considered a security concern.

The department then announced Thursday, five days after Zhang’s viral post, that it would collect all secure laptops from incarcerated students statewide “to provide an immediate system update.” By Saturday, corrections staff had collected around 1,200 laptops, spokesperson Chris Wright said in an email.

Wright confirmed no one incarcerated in Washington prisons had attempted to unlock their devices but said the decision was “made out of an abundance of caution.” It wasn’t immediately clear whether other states whose corrections departments use Securebook 5 laptops have also pulled the devices.

Archived at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/LS3co

e; updated the title due to popular demand

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[–] [email protected] 104 points 9 months ago (5 children)

They didn’t lose their laptop. They got taken to be updated because of a security breach

[–] [email protected] 46 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Intentionally inflammatory and misleading headlines on Lemmy? Pshaw. The hell you say.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not a Lemmy issue. Click bait unfortunately works to drive views through all social media platforms.

The thing I love is being able to click into the comments first to see the auto-generated summary. Prevents the site from getting my traffic.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The community could make rules on what is acceptable to post or not though. And disallow websites that regularly mislead.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

And it should require copying the title from the article and not allow editorializing it (or only slightly).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

I never realize what responses like this add to the discussion.

do you have any other community platform free from clickbaits? do you need a pat on the back cuz you think you're immune to clickbaits? what's the point?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Yea the title is extra click baity

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

The article is news worthy but I downvoted the post due to the title being garbage.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Like everything ad driven has to be.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Calling it a security breach is a bit of a stretch, to be fair. The company that issued them never changed the default BIOS password, so inmates could gain admin control over them if they wanted. Changing default passwords is like the most basic Help Desk 1 training.

I can almost guarantee that the company is owned by someone who also has direct ties to the prison’s leadership, and they spun up the corporation just to issue (and profit from) the laptops. Because there’s no way that an experienced IT team would allow 1200 laptops to walk out the door with default passwords.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Having root access to that computer means they can do a lot of throngs they aren’t supposed to. I fail to see this as anything but a security breach for this.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

i’d say that it’s a security vulnerability, but breach implies it’s been used

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I see. That makes sense.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (2 children)

They were taken for reasons that inmates had nothing to do with, they have not been replaced, and it's unclear when they'll be returned. Inmates who are enrolled in college courses are having to handwrite papers that are due soon.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

Its the us slavery system. The laptops will be returned whenever something happens to some prisoner(s) that gets successfully sold as tragic to the masses. I hope there is some young attractive white mother who was taking classes on the laptops and is about to finish her sentence, or else they're gonna be waiting a while.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

There was no security breach. Did you even read the summary, let alone the article? There wasn't even an attempted breach.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

There is a breach as he released the default password, but no one attempted to breach it, as in no one tried to use the default password on their computer. Did you even try to understand what you read?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

It's a vulnerability, not a breach. As you pointed out, no one attempted to breach it.