Cabinet to recommend presidential pardon to students and lecturer inolved in ethical hacking case

The Cabinet has discussed the case involving three students and a lecturer facing criminal charges related to what has been described as ethical hacking on the Freehour app.

The Cabinet took into account the public position expressed by the alleged victim of the offence, as well as the fact that, at the time of the alleged offence, the country lacked policies and legislation on identifying vulnerabilities and security weaknesses within organisational systems and networks.

For these reasons, the Cabinet has decided to recommend that the President grants a pardon to the students and lecturer accused in the case “Police vs Luke Scerri et al”, thereby closing the matter.

The lecturer and students were informed of this development during a meeting with Minister for Justice and Construction Sector Reform Jonathan Attard.

What happened?

In October 2022, Michael Debono, Giorgio Grigolo, Luke Bjorn Scerri, Luke Collins, and their lecturer Dr Mark Joseph Vella, were scanning through the software of the FreeHour app when they found a vulnerability where the user’s data could be leaked. The students say that the app could be exploited by malicious hackers.

After they found the vulnerability, the students sent an  e-mail to FreeHour to alert them.

After sending the e-mail, Mr Scerri, Mr Grigolo and Mr Debono were arrested from their homes and taken into custody where they were strip-searched and questioned. Mr Collins was questioned when he returned to Malta from England, where he was studying for his PhD.

The charges that they are facing were leaked on 30th August by Mark Camilleri, and they are set to appear before Magistrate Marse-Ann Farrugia next March.

In April of 2023, BusinessNow.mt reached out to a qualified information security specialist who lamented Malta’s lack of safe harbour provisions – laws which protect ethical hackers and cater for the finding and reporting of cyber vulnerabilities.