Home Latest Cyber Security News | Network Security Hacking Man Who Hacked Jail Computer System to Bust Out Friend Gets Long Sentence

Man Who Hacked Jail Computer System to Bust Out Friend Gets Long Sentence

by Harikrishna Mekala

A man named Konrads Voits was sentenced to 7 years and 3 months for hacking into the Washtenaw County Jail. After gaining access to the system, he modified the prisoner record of his friend to reduce the sentence time. Mr Voits was asked to pay $235,488 dollars and should serve 3 years of supervised release.

Voits admitted that between January and March 2017, he engaged in the attack using a social engineering campaign to hack into the Washtenaw County Jail’s computer system. He used to send mail bursts to county employees redirecting them to ewashtenaw.org which is a carbon copy of the official website.

The email burst was unsuccessful, however when he called the employees of the jail referencing himself as jail IT staff, he tricked them into installing a fake update containing malware that steals usernames, emails and passwords of the jailers. The malware was able to collect the employee records of 1600 employees.

“Through the installation and use of this malware, Voits was able to gain full access to the County network, including access to sensitive County records such as the XJail system (the computer program used  to monitor and track inmates in the County Jail), search warrant affidavits, internal discipline records, and County employee personal information,” the plea agreement reads.

When he accessed the inmate records, IT staff were able to locate the intrusion immediately using “XJail” the inmate management system. The staff logged his activity and discovered he had modified the records of one prisoner by altering the release date. The court documents didn’t go into the technical details of how the hack took place but the entry of the prisoner was altered to its previous state and the FBI was called to track down the intruder of the system. Voits was arrested last summer and pleaded guilty in December 2017.

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