With my reading of the slashdot article, using your example, he's what I see
that happened.
Starting at your "The door opens."
He seemed to:
Enter the store (one he used to work at)
Inform the store's customers that he was able to enter the store,
knowing this could cause harm to the store's reputation.
Moved unknown amounts of things around in the store, perhaps taking
or destroying some things (maybe, maybe not, noone except the
intruder knows for sure)
NOT tell the store owners that he entered the store, nor the authorities.
Left the store, and left the door closed in the same way it was when
he first leaned up against it: i.e. made it still look "secure", so
it wasn't apparent that anyone had gotten in.
After being caught, says he did all this to "prove that the store
was insecure". The question is, who was he proving this to? The
store owners (to help the store) or the store customers (to harm
the store)? Since he had told the customers, the only conclusion
was that he was proving this to the customers, in order to do harm.
My quickie opinion: the guy's a crook and deserves to be arrested
for what he did.
karyn
Ian Scott wrote:
So, one night, I'm taking a stroll along main street in my town. I stop for a
rest, and happen to lean up against the front door of a store.
I notice the door gives a little bit - and out of curiousity and concern, push
a little harder.
The door opens.
I immediately stop what I am doing, and notify the owners and the authorities
that the premises are insecure.
By the absolute legal definition, I have indeed "broke and entered" the
premises.
Where the hell is motive in all of this? I think that unless there was motive
to do some harm, this conviction is utterly ridiculous.
That's my quickie opinion on the matter.
Best,
Ian Scott
On May 10, 2006 10:20 am, William Hancock wrote:
Hey there pen-testers, take this with a grain of salt, it just got me
excited. I am really interested in everyones opinion on the matter or
corporate responsibility and ownership.
<RANT>
In an article posted to slashdot today
(http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/10/112259&from=rss) a man
has been convicted of hacking when he casually and helpfully reported a
security vulnerability to the owners of a web site, in this case The
University of Southern California. It reads like it was some sort of
simple SQL injection and upon gleaning the information he reported it.
What are we to do as a community I ask? We should we, the good guys,
who are paid for our knowledge and ability to exploit mistakes,
oversights, and weaknesses then professionally report them to aid in the
securing of information capital (or anyone who reports the flaw for that
matter) worry about prosecution. It lends itself to a forcing the
technical community to sit on their laurels and wait for the people who
don't report issues to exploit them. Further it sounds very clear that
had he not notified them, they would have never known.
A security pro notices a flaw, checks to make sure he is not on crack by
'flipping a bit', deems the threat viable and is likely to be exploited,
notifies the owners, then get arrested and charged with unauthorized
access. We, as a or even The security community, should push
corporations, governments, and organized body's to take responsibility
and ownership of their problems. If they publish a site that is flawed
or exposing information then they are authorizing the retrieval of that
information. I'm not advocating that they laws should allow any jerk to
try and brute his or her way in to a public or private web site, but
come on.
If someone leaves their wallet in the park with no guard or protection,
I pick it up and bring it back to the owner, the owner didn't want me to
have it but I brought it back to him. Why in the hell should I have to
go to jail for returning it to him, why should I/we be punished for
doing the right thing?
I acknowledge this to be a rant but there must but some way to insist
that when people make something available to the public that it is their
responsibility to safeguard it and appreciate not persecute someone who
let's them know (for free I might add) that a weakness exists. This is
simple scapegoating, the University did something not advisable as a
good practice and instead of owning up to it they villafied a
professional pen-tester for offering valid advice.
</RANT>
Thanks,
Bill
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