Description: It appears that a security flaw across Quebec’s higher education system has ended in one student’s expulsion. After exposing a major system weakness Ahmed Al-Khabaz was voted out of his school’s computer science department.

Source: FastCompany

Date: January 22nd, 2013

Last fall, a 20-year-old computer science student named Ahmed Al-Khabaz at Dawson College in Montreal was building a mobile app with a friend to allow their classmates to more easily access their college accounts when they came across a bit of “sloppy coding” in the university’s computer system. The security flaw, he told Toronto’s National Post, would allow “anyone with a basic knowledge of computers to gain access to the personal information of any student in the system, including social insurance number, home address and phone number, class schedule, basically all the information the college has on a student.” Read Rest of Story

Questions for discussion:

1. What was the scope of the systems flaw?

2. How did his expulsion positively effect Al-Khabaz’s life? What were his motives?