This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A University of Utah student who admitted hacking into a professor's computer account and changing his grades was sentenced Thursday to four months of incarceration.
U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell declined a prosecution request to sentence You Li to a year in prison, saying the crime was an aberration for the 22-year-old and that he was obviously remorseful. Li, a Chinese national, likely will do his time in a jail or halfway house.
Li told the judge that there was no excuse for his actions.
“I've made up my mind to have an honest life from now on,” he said.
At the time of his offense in December 2004, Li was living in Sandy and pursuing an undergraduate degree in computer science. He pleaded guilty as part of a plea bargain to one count each of accessing a protected computer in attempted furtherance of fraud and obtaining information from a protected computer.
In a written description of his offenses, Li said he used a software program - or "hacker tool" - to decrypt the password on the math department computer system and found a professor's password. He then found a spreadsheet file that contained a list of all students in one of his classes and their grades on assignments and tests.
"So, in an attempt to improve the grade I would receive in the professor's class, I changed more than one of my grades in that spreadsheet to better grades, including changing at least one grade from failing to passing," Li wrote.
Despite his efforts, Li's hacking changed nothing on the official record: The file he accessed was actually a backup and the professor kept track of grades in a primary file on a laptop computer.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has made no decision on Li's immigration status.
“I've made up my mind to have an honest life from now on.”
YOU LI
sentenced to four months