Opinion ID: 4076467
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Hacking and Cracking

Text: The first method TLI used to hack into its clients’ Avaya systems was hiring former Avaya employee Dave Creswick to crack logins and passwords. Creswick knew that TLI needed the passwords “[t]o do their maintenance” in competition with Avaya. (J.A. 2277.) He would hack into systems and activate MSPs on TLI’s clients’ systems, and he also activated DADMIN login access several times. The evidence introduced at trial of the Creswick hacking scheme was copious, and came mostly from the testimony of TLI executives themselves. Chief Technology Officer Scott Graham acknowledged that TLI paid Creswick to “enable some logins and MSPs” (J.A. 2292) and that it 26 began paying Creswick for this service while TLI was still under contract as an Avaya Business Partner. CEO Douglas Graham acknowledged using Creswick as an “ex-Avaya employee [to] create a new password for the system[s].” (J.A. 2747.) Avaya introduced an email in which Douglas Graham offered Creswick “a flat rate of $300 a password for single situations and $200 a password if you do more [than] one password at a time.” (J.A. 6117.) In another email, Creswick bragged to Douglas Graham that “there has not been [an Avaya PBX] system created that I cannot get into.” (J.A. 6059.) TLI eventually developed additional means to access Avaya PBXs, and by 2008, it had begun to “read [] passwords” for itself, using a method similar to (but simpler than) Creswick’s. (J.A. 2361.) TLI also hacked Avaya systems by hiring another former Avaya employee, Harold Hall, who used software “provided by Avaya” during his time as an Avaya employee to “beat” Avaya’s security systems. (J.A. 2293). Hall had taken the software, called an “ASG key,” with him when he left Avaya’s employment. He acknowledged at trial that he did not receive permission from Avaya to do so. Scott Graham admitted that Hall’s method was necessary to overcome “an additional security method that was implemented by Avaya on certain releases of the ... PBX software.” (J.A. 2365.) He conceded that he knew “Hall had [software] provided to him by Avaya” and that he “believe[d] [Hall] used it through most of his career at Avaya” before using that software “subsequently as a contractor.” (J.A. 2366.) In his own testimony, Hall estimated that he had used the ASG key for TLI “40 [to] 60” times. (J.A. 3057.) 27