Monmouth struck by mass 'e-mail bomb'

The possibility that students could cause a university's entire e-mail system to crash is not all that far-fetched. And a student at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, N.J., may have proven it. Federal Bureau of Investigation officials are accusing Monmouth junior Dominick LaScala of sending 24,000 e-mail messages to two Monmouth University administrators from a non-university account, crashing the university's system for five hours. Because he allegedly sent the messages from a non-university account, LaScala is being brought up on federal charges of using a computer to send data he knew would damage a system. He is also being charged with using a computer with reckless disregard and "computer-assisted revenge." The FBI became involved as soon as Monmouth received the massive influx of messages. FBI agents and Monmouth system operators tracked the messages to LaScala. LaScala's messages contained random text and were sent by an "e-mail bomb" program, which will automatically send repeated messages to a single account. Federal investigators traced the messages to Internet accounts in two states and to another Monmouth student's account, eventually leading them to LaScala. According to Penn Data Communications and Computing Services Executive Director Dan Updegrove, a similar incident could easily occur here. "It's quite possible for someone to do nasty stuff here," he said. "It isn't all that tough to write a program that sends repeated messages and the system is designed to accept messages from whoever sends them." Updegrove compared the incident with making thousands of photocopies of a flier -- a much more difficult, expensive and time-consuming endeavor. "It isn't that hard to send 10,000 copies of electronic mail," he added. "It's the power of a computer, and we have to deal with the occasional misbehavior." Noting that an incident like this is "one of the risks of doing academic business in an electronic world," Updegrove said universities generally have user-friendly e-mail systems. But this can lead to security lapses, he said. "It's unfortunate to make systems harder to use because a couple of people misbehave," he added. Depending on how fast the messages are sent and the capacity of the system's storage disk, an e-mail bomb could either cause a slowdown in the system or a complete overload, Updegrove said. "It might be different depending on which system at Penn crashed, or if it were multiple systems, but all the major systems have backups," Updegrove said. "I doubt it would take five hours to restore." But Updegrove stressed that people who try to destroy the system can often be easily traced. According to Updegrove, the Monmouth student's prank would be classified as a violation of the "policy on ethical behavior with respect to the electronic information environment" at Penn. While Monmouth administrators are still debating whether LaScala will face internal disciplinary charges, he faces six years in prison and a $350,000 fine if convicted on the federal charges. Updegrove said that if LaScala, or any other student who committed these violations, used an internal school-based account, the case would most likely be handled internally. "It doesn't go without saying that a misbehavior within the institution wouldn't be brought to external authorities," he said. "But it's more likely it would be handled internally." LaScala's university computer privileges had previously been suspended because he posted commercial messages on inappropriate parts of the Internet.

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