Case Study: Hacking into Harvard Everyone who has ever

Case Study: Hacking into Harvard Everyone who has ever

Case Study: Hacking into HarvardEveryone who has ever applied for admission to a selective school or university orwho has been interviewed for a highly desired job knows the feeling of waitingimpatiently to learn the result of ones application. So its not hard to identify withthose applicants to some of the USAs most prestigious MBA programs who thoughtthey had a chance to get an early glimpse at whether their ambition was to be fulfilled. While visiting a Businessweek Online message board, they found instructions, posted by an anonymous hacker, explaining how to find out what admission decision the business schools had made in their case. Doing so wasnt hard. The universities in question – Harvard, Dartmouth, Duke, Carnegie Mellon, MIT and Stanford – use the same application software from Apply Yourself, Inc. Essentially, all one had to do was change the very end of the applicant-specific URL to get to the supposedly restricted page containing the verdict on ones application. In the nine hours it took Apply Yourself programmers to patch the security flaw after it was posted, curiosity got the better of about 200 applicants, who couldnt resist the temptation to discover whether they had been admitted.Some of them got only blank screens. But others learned that they had beententatively accepted or tentatively rejected. What they didnt count on, however, weretwo things: First, that it wouldnt take the business schools long to learn what hadhappened and who had done it; and, second, that the schools in question were going to be very unhappy about it. Harvard was perhaps the most outspoken. Kim B. Clark,dean of the business school, said, ‘This behaviour is unethical at best – a seriousbreach of trust that cannot be countered by rationalization. In a similar vein, SteveNelson, the executive director of Harvards MBA program, stated, ‘Hacking into asystem in this manner is unethical and also contrary to the behaviour we expect ofleaders we aspire to develop.It didnt take Harvard long to make up its mind what to do about it. It rejected all119 applicants who had attempted to access the information. In an official statement,Dean Clark wrote that the mission of the Harvard Business School ‘is to educateprincipled leaders who make a difference in the world. To achieve that, a person must have many skills and qualities, including the highest standards of integrity, sound judgment and a strong moral compass – an intuitive sense of what is right and wrong.Those who have hacked into this web site have failed to pass that test. CarnegieMellon and MIT quickly followed suit. By rejecting the ethically challenged, saidRichard L. Schmalensee, dean of MITs Sloan School of Management, the schools are trying to ‘send a message to society as a whole that we are attempting to produce people that when they go out into the world, they will behave ethically.Duke and Dartmouth, where only a handful of students gained access to their files,said they would take a case-by-case approach and didnt publicly announce theirindividualised determinations. But, given the competition for places in their MBAprograms, its a safe bet that few, if any, offending applicants were sitting inclassrooms the following semester. Forty-two applicants attempted to learn theirresults early at Stanford, which took a different tack. It invited the accused hackers toexplain themselves in writing. ‘In the best case, what has been demonstrated here is a lack of judgment; in the worst case, a lack of integrity, said Derrick Bolton,Stanfords director of MBA admissions. ‘One of the things we try to teach at businessschools is making good decisions and taking responsibility for your actions. Sixweeks later, however, the dean of Stanford Business School, Robert Joss, reported,‘None of those who gained unauthorized access was able to explain his or her actions to our satisfaction. He added that he hoped the applicants ‘might learn from their experience.Given the publics concern over the wave of corporate scandals in recent yearsand its growing interest in corporate social responsibility, business writers and othermedia commentators warmly welcomed Harvards decisive response. But soon therewas some sniping at the decision by those claiming that Harvard and the otherbusiness schools had overreacted. Although 70 per cent of Harvards MBA studentsapproved of the decision, the undergraduate student newspaper, The Crimson, wassceptical. ‘HBS [Harvard Business School] has scored a media victory with its hardline stance, it said in an editorial. ‘Americans have been looking for a sign from the business community, particularly its leading educational institutions, that business ethics are a priority. HBSs false bravado has given them one, leaving 119 victims in angry hands.As some critics pointed out, Harvards stance overlooked the possibility that thehacker might have been a spouse or a parent who had access to the applicantspassword and personal identification number. In fact, one applicant said that this hadhappened to him. His wife found the instructions at Businessweek Online and tried tocheck on the success of his application. ‘Im really distraught over this, he said. ‘Mywife is tearing her hair out. To this, Harvards Dean Clark responds, ‘We expectapplicants to be personally responsible for the access to the website, and for theidentification and passwords they receive.Critics also reject the idea that the offending applicants were ‘hackers. After all,they used their own personal identification and passwords to log on legitimately; allthey did was to modify the URL to go to a different page. They couldnt changeanything in their files or view anyone elses information. In fact, some critics blamedthe business schools and Apply Yourself more than they did the applicants. If thosepages were supposed to be restricted, then it shouldnt have been so easy to find ones way to them.In an interview, one of the Harvard applicants said that although he now sees thatwhat he did was wrong, he wasnt thinking about that at the time – he just followedthe hackers posted instructions out of curiosity. He didnt consider what he did to be‘hacking, because any novice could have done the same thing. ‘Im not an IT personby any stretch of the imagination, he said. ‘Im not even a great typist. He wrote theuniversity a letter of apology. ‘I admitted that I got curious and had a lapse injudgment, he said. ‘I pointed out that I wasnt trying to harm anyone and wasnttrying to get an advantage over anyone. Another applicant said that he knew he hadmade a poor judgement but he was offended by having his ethics called into question. ‘I had no idea that they would have considered this a big deal. And some of those posting messages at Businessweek Online and other MBA-related sites believe the offending applicants should be applauded. ‘Exploiting weaknesses is what good business is all about. Why would they ding you? wrote one anonymous poster.Dean Schmalensee of MIT, however, defends Harvards and MITs automaticallyrejecting everyone who peeked ‘because it wasnt an impulsive mistake. ‘Theinstructions are reasonably elaborate, he said. ‘You didnt need a degree in computer science, but this clearly involved effort. You couldnt do this casually without knowing that you were doing something wrong. Weve always taken ethics seriously, and this is a serious matter. To those applicants who say that they didnt do any harm, Schmalensee replies, ‘Is there nothing wrong with going through files just because you can?To him and others, seeking unauthorised access to restricted pages is as wrong assnooping through your boss desk to see whether youve been recommended for araise. Some commentators, however, suggest there may be a generation gap here.Students who grew up with the Internet, they say, tend to see it as wide-open territory and dont view this level of web snooping as indicating a character flaw.Source: This case study is based on ‘Hacker Hits Top Business Schools and ‘Schools Boot Snoopy Grad Students, CBS News, 4 March and 15 April 2005 (online); ‘Harvard Rejects 119 Accused of Hacking and ‘MIT Says It Wont Admit Hackers, Boston Globe, 8 March 2005 (online); Dan Carnevale, ‘Business-School Applicants, under Cover of Anonymity, Dispute “Hacker” Label, Chronicle of Higher Education, 11 March 2005 (online); ‘A Lesson in Moral Leadership, Financial Times, 25 April 2005, 11.The Purpose of this assignment:1 .To demonstrate your understanding and application of the ethical dimension to business decision making.2. To demonstrate your understanding and application of the concept of stakeholders to business decision making.3. To demonstrate your understanding and application of ethical theories to business decision making.This assignment is about answering 5 questions for the case study above. You need to analyse the case and loosen it up in order to answer the questions. The processes of analysing the case can be broken into some tasks then use the outcomes to answer the questions.Questions:1. What is an ethical problem? In terms of your explanation, what is it about theabove situation that makes it an ethical problem?(150 words)2. What is an ethical dilemma? Do you think that having read the instructions onhow to access the Apply Yourself website, these students faced a dilemma? Whyor why not?(150 words)3. When the Dean of Harvard Business School considered his response to thesituation, he should of been thinking about the implications of his decision for hisstakeholders. Identify and explain the potential implications for two keystakeholders if the Dean had of decided to ignore the hacking.(150 words)4. Describe one normative theory of ethics. Explain how this theory could be used todefend the decision of the Dean of Harvard Business School.(350 words)5. If you could potentially access the Massey University website to find out yourgrade for this paper before it was publically released, how would you defend yourdecision to access (or not) the website?

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