Student of EF SPSU condemned for hacking faculty site

The pride of the Faculty of Economics of St. Petersburg State University - after 3 years, the hacker of the site was sentenced.

Here is a quote from the official website of the faculty:

According to the Information Technology Center of the Faculty of Economics, on September 15, in the Court of the Moscow District of St. Petersburg, the sentence was pronounced in a criminal case about hacking into the site of the Faculty of Economics in spring 2006.
')
The accused was found guilty of committing crimes under Art. 273 Part 1 of the Criminal Code "The creation, use and distribution of malicious computer programs."

At the request of the prosecutor, as a punishment, the hacker was assigned two years of imprisonment in a penal colony, a fine of 20 thousand rubles and the confiscation of equipment using which a computer crime was committed.

According to the humane 73rd article of the Criminal Code "Conditional conviction", the penalty was reduced to a suspended sentence (2 years).

Penalty and confiscation left.

Thus, the hooligan trick of a computer attacker received a proper assessment of justice and the honor and dignity of the economic faculty are protected.

Pruflink.

To be precise, the hacking was done on March 30, 2006. On the student site of the faculty, the discussion immediately began. The “hacker” himself appeared on the forum, explaining the motives of his actions. The hacker did not hide.

Unfortunately, the screenshots of hacking have not been preserved - they have all been deleted. However, the essence of the hack was deface. In this case, the site administrators were clearly indicated on the vulnerability. The only solution from the site administrators was to roll back the database. Holes were not closed. Then, the next day, the exact same flaw was made.

However, as you can see, it was all over the court. Nevertheless, among students there is still an ambiguous look at the problem. Some were glad that the site had been hacked, because everyone knew that a lot of money had been spent on development, but so far, for already a year now, the site has been extremely inconvenient to use, it has intricate navigation, a poorly functioning search. Others are glad that the culprit was punished.

And what point of view do you hold?
Roughly speaking, on one side of the scale there is a “deface”, and on the other - two years conditional and a penalty.

UPD: Habraeffekt in action. www.econ.pu.ru/wps/wcm/connect/econ - lies with 500 errors [ link to the first one to notice ].

UPD2: econ.pu.ru/wps/wcm/connect/econ - the site has never worked without a WWW since its inception.

UPD3: The link to the news on the faculty site has been removed from the main page and news block.