Incarcerated hacker Anonymous hacked prison system and cut off prisoners’ sentences

An unprecedented incident occurred in the Târgu Jiu penal colony – a prisoner hacker associated with the Anonymous group managed to hack the prison’s internal computer network and change the data about his own sentence, as well as help 15 other prisoners.

How it happened

According to the prison police officers’ union, a convicted cybercriminal gained access to the IMSweb system, which contains a complete database of all prisoners in the country. To do this, he used the info kiosk in the colony and the login of one of the police officers, who had not changed his password for years. This turned out to be enough to get administrator rights.

After that, the hacker began to “fix” digital reality: – He added “earning days” to himself, reducing the term of his sentence; – He transferred money between the prisoners’ personal accounts; data-start=”969″ data-end=”972″ />— He changed records of intimate encounters.

Thus, 15 more convicts, to whose profiles he had full access, received “improved conditions”.

How it all turned out

The scheme was exposed by an employee of the financial service, who noticed that after the purchases, the money did not disappear from the prisoners’ accounts. The check showed that one of them made online purchases for 10 thousand lei, but the balance remained unchanged.

Further investigation revealed that the attackers had been operating for about three months, spending more than 300 hours in the system.

The National Penitentiary Administration said that this was an “isolated incident” and that the system had already been isolated for inspection. At the same time, disciplinary proceedings are pending against the colony employees who were negligent.

Systemic problem

As it turned out, IMSweb was launched in 2023 with European funds in the amount of €1 million. The project should be supervised by cybersecurity specialists, but, according to the union, it was “hastily put into operation” so as not to lose funding. As a result, the system turned out to be vulnerable to evil even from inside the prison.

The scandal also exposed other problems in the penitentiary system: accusations of abuse of power and harassment against the leadership of the National Administration appeared in the press.

Cybersecurity experts believe that this case could become a precedent – the first time a Romanian prisoner has managed to hack a state system of this level.