The University of Connecticut College of Engineering has issued an apology for a cybersecurity lab that included the name of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter.
The assignment, which entailed using increasingly challenging methods to obtain the passwords of criminal actors, included the shooter’s name as one of the users in the “darknet server” that students were tasked to infiltrate. The student is placed in the role of “a Connecticut law-enforcement cybersec researcher” and asked to crack the passwords of the man bearing the name of the shooter and subsequently, all the members of his “gang.”
Following student complaints, the course instructors issued an immediate apology to members of the class on Tuesday, Jan. 30, writing, “We have recently become aware that certain details in our original Lab 1 instructions reflected real-world scenarios and caused distress. We apologize for the presence of these examples in our document.”
The professors in question promised to immediately “prepar[e] a revised version of the lab instructions” and vowed they would “take care to prevent such instances in the future.”
According to former cybersecurity students, the material in question had been part of the course in the past. The name of the shooter is the only one explicitly mentioned in the lab instructions, with other questions focusing on cracking the passwords of as many additional gang members as possible.
Alums contacted by the Hartford Courant noted that cybersecurity classes at UConn commonly use real-life figures, including historical murderers, in simulation databases. Examples of assignments from 2021 included the likes of mob boss Al Capone, cult leader Charles Manson, and Ted Kaczynski, otherwise known as the Unabomber, as would-be hacking targets.
Dean of the College of Engineering Kazem Kazerounian sent a separate email to all students in the college later on Tuesday, expressing his “deepest apologies on behalf of the College of Engineering and the course’s instructors, who have reached out to its students to express their regret for this error in judgment and immediately changed the content.”
“Some students reported to the University that they were understandably troubled and dismayed by this, noting that the assignment’s use of that specific name was needless and the emotional value of the scenario was not contingent on it,” Kazerounian said. “We are truly sorry that this occurred, especially for our students who hail from Newtown and all those who were personally affected by the events on that terrible day.”
Kazerounian’s email to students additionally included information about the services of UConn Student Health & Wellness for any in need of support, including its 24/7 mental health line at 833-308-3040.