Abela Proposes Presidential Pardon For Students And Lecturer Charged With Hacking
Prime Minister Robert Abela confirmed he will ask Cabinet to consider granting a presidential pardon to three students and their lecturer, who have been charged by the police for hacking the FreeHour app to expose security vulnerabilities.
“I don’t believe this case should continue in court and I think the criminal proceedings against them are unfair,” Abela told TVM. “I therefore believe this case can benefit from Cabinet’s prerogative to end these criminal proceedings.”
He confirmed he will ask Cabinet to discuss the possibility of granting a presidential pardon to the students – Michael Debono, Giorgio Grigolo, and Luke Bjorn Scerri – and their lecturer Mark Joseph Vella.
The police decided to press charges around two years after the initial arrest. The youths had hacked into FreeHour’s backend, temporarily made a small change, and emailed the screenshot to CEO Zach Ciappara, along with a list of the website’s security flaws.
In the email, they told Ciappara he has three months to resolve the issues before they publicly disclose them, and said they would be eligible for a bug bounty.
Ciappara reported this email to the police, stating he had received legal advice that he would have been breaking the law if he hadn’t.
However, Freehour and Ciappara have since made it clear that they don’t want legal action to be taken, and that they don’t believe the students had any malicious intent.
Nevertheless, the police and the Attorney General decided to charge the students with gaining unauthorised access to the application and their lecturer with being an accomplice since he had proofread the email they had sent to FreeHour.
READ NEXT: Robert Abela Expresses ‘Firm Support’ For EU’s Ukraine Strategy And More Russian Sanctions
