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“I truly understand the severity and gravity of the situation. I want to say that I never had any malicious intent and I never intended to cause harm or damage to anyone in any way.”

Assistant Crown attorney James Cavanaugh read an agreed statement of facts that outlined how Solis-Reyes was able to breach the CRA systems from his laptop.

The student’s lawyer, Faisal Joseph, told the judge that Solis-Reyes was able to get into the CRA in “six seconds.”

Central to the case was Solis-Reyes’ intentions. Joseph told the judge it would have been easy for Solis-Reyes to sell the information or make money off it. None of that happened.

“He did it because he could, because he was capable of breaking into these national security places,” Joseph said, adding that Solis-Reyes “has done the country a service” by exposing the flaws in the system.

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His father, Roberto Solis-Oba, the graduate chairman of Western’s computer science department, wrote that it was his son’s “insatiable curiosity that led him to perform the actions that got him in trouble with the law.

“He used available code to test computer systems for a software vulnerability,” he wrote. “He never intended to cause any harm and he did not try to sell, damage or misuse any of the information obtained from these computer systems.”

The defence provided the judge more than 20 reference letters from professors, teachers, friends and family who all spoke of Solis-Reyes’ high intellect and respectful nature.