61–70 of 113 posts
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What? He didn't steal anything. It's more like standing outside of the bookstore yelling about the owner.
It's more like breaking into the store at night and changing all the signage to read "I molest little children".
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> he didn't actually do anything that I think should be illegal. Registering multiple false user names? Giving false feedback? Restraint of trade? I'm not a fan of government prosecuting someone for registering on Facebook with the user name "Joe Schmoe" in order to blog anonymously about their crappy job at Microsoft. ...but I have no problem at all with the government enforcing laws against using aliases to log int…
"Registering multiple false user names? Giving false feedback?" Well then, unless your actual name is "tjic" then we are both criminals right off the bat. And since when is the government in the business of checking whether feedback is "false" or not? That's the company's job. It's not illegal to lie unless you are under oath, and nobody was. "Restraint of trade?" I don't see how Amazon's trade has been restrained in…
Under US law, there is no such thing as a sole "actual" name. Any name that you use for non-fraudulent purposes is a legitimate name.
TJIC is my initials: Travis James Ignatius Corcoran.
I have been using it as a legitimate name for 15 years. My mom addresses emails and letters to me using that name.
So, no, I'm not a criminal.
...but if someone signed up for an account at Amazon using 500 different names, and one of them was "TJIC", and the intent was to inject bad data ... yes, that person would be a criminal.
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"Registering multiple false user names? Giving false feedback?" Well then, unless your actual name is "tjic" then we are both criminals right off the bat. And since when is the government in the business of checking whether feedback is "false" or not? That's the company's job. It's not illegal to lie unless you are under oath, and nobody was. "Restraint of trade?" I don't see how Amazon's trade has been restrained in…
Dear god, not this argument again. Sometimes that's a sign that your point of view is out of whack. (And being able to realize this is a mark of true learning. And yeah, it is painful sometimes.) What happened here is more like Whole Foods setting out free samples. If someone concocted a scheme to walk out the front door with all of the free samples, I would not be at all surprised if the perpetrator were taken off t…
Same goes for you, of course ; )
Unfortunately, regardless of who is ethically right or wrong, my view will retain the upper hand, for the simple fact that the network is global, and whatever laws you pass in any country will not, nor ever, apply to all. For this simple reason you must continue to consider security the sole responsible of the proprietor, and assume the complete legal immunity of the customer/attacker (same thing).
"If someone concocted a scheme to walk out the front door with all of the free samples"
I do not particularly care for the idea of the judiciary being involved in rationing out Whole Foods' free samples. I do see your point - theft is theft, after all - but do you really want to make an obvious prank illegal? Outright shoplifting is one thing. Pranks are another, and they were free samples. You're so enthusiastic to consider intent in your other examples, why forget all about it in this one?
Wow. Anyone who owns, or hopes to own, an internet-based community of any type should read this, just to get a sense of the sophisticated methods and the lengths trolls will go to. While I have to hand it to this guy for deviousness and persistence, he is, after all, the "enemy" as far as the Web Site Owner is concerned. It boggles the mind that anyone would do this, but they evidently do, and you may well have to de…
He could also be seen as a free security consultant. What he did basically amounted to a victimless crime, but could have possibly been used for something worse. If Amazon has one CSRF vulnerability via an improper use of GET, there may well be more. This incident may help them tighten their systems against more malicious attacks.
As for me, I'm considering looking for a new default myself. Powells, here I come?
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"Registering multiple false user names? Giving false feedback?" Well then, unless your actual name is "tjic" then we are both criminals right off the bat. And since when is the government in the business of checking whether feedback is "false" or not? That's the company's job. It's not illegal to lie unless you are under oath, and nobody was. "Restraint of trade?" I don't see how Amazon's trade has been restrained in…
> Well then, unless your actual name is "tjic" then we are both criminals right off the bat. Under US law, there is no such thing as a sole "actual" name. Any name that you use for non-fraudulent purposes is a legitimate name. TJIC is my initials: Travis James Ignatius Corcoran. I have been using it as a legitimate name for 15 years. My mom addresses emails and letters to me using that name. So, no, I'm not a crimina…
"but if someone signed up for an account at Amazon using 500 different names, and one of them was "TJIC", and the intent was to inject bad data ... yes, that person would be a criminal."
No way. Guaranteeing the integrity of Amazon's Customer Review data is not the job of the state. Guaranteeing the legitimacy of the name(s) used to sign up for accounts is not the job of the state. Assessing the state of mind of someone filling in Amazon's complaints form is not the job of the state.
I am kind of amazed you think the government or the law should be even tangentially involved in any of this.
the alleged perpetrator is 'weev', one of the people featured in that NY Times article that everybody was talking about awhile back, "The Trolls Among Us." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=263673
weev interview: http://www.corrupt.org/act/interviews/weev What a whackjob. Quotes: "I contend that trolling is the chief moral arbiter of the Internet. I see little difference between the methods performed by trolls on the Internet when they ruin the lives of furries and pedophiles and the methods used by Moses when he ordered the idol worshippers killed. Martin Luther contended in his tract "On the Jews and Their L…
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It's more like breaking into the store at night and changing all the signage to read "I molest little children".
Through a door that was left wide open, and in erasable marker.
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Well, actually, it is those "lusers" who executed the trojan, and their computers, capable of action and under their control, that sent the packets. Since when is "but I didn't know!" an excuse? Sounds like negligence to me; widespread perhaps, but negligence nonetheless. It's like those people who buy those terrible cheap car alarms that go off at anything at all and then don't stop for an hour. Their car is sitting…
Another's negligence does not justify being an asshole! If Mrs. Smith was running a bric-a-brac store and didn't know how to secure her display cases, then it's alright to shoplift from her? If Mrs. Smith was holding a big party at her house, then it's alright for a party goer to steal her life savings? If I hand a firearm disguised as a jelly donut to a random bystander, then they shoot someone with it, it's their f…
The fact is, nothing was stolen and no-one died. You're all about "intent" so intend this: this whole story is one guy exploiting Amazon's flawed security to annoy gay people.
I do not even like Weev. This is nothing but principle, namely - should the government be papering, with the full force of the law, over the cracks in Amazon's security?
I say, "no". You say "yes". We are each convinced of our righteousness. Let's leave it there.
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I see your point, but also that of the parent post. Is losing salesrank of a novel over the weekend (a holiday weekend no less), really a boom-or-bust kind of thing? If he'd been more malicious with this then this would be a crime with actual victims, but in this case I just can't reason through it enough to believe that.
How many customers did Amazon lose this weekend that will likely never hear that this was a hack? He directly and irreparably harmed the reputation of a company, how is this victimless at all?