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doctor-don

macrumors 68000
Dec 26, 2008
1,604
336
Georgia USA
Ok so someone hacked and got a bunch of e-mail addresses. Did he exploit/steal anyone? No. He even helped at&t by pointing out that security breach before someone else with worse intentions hacked it.
And you think that person should rot in jail for a year and more? Have you seen how is a jail inside? It's not easy to go in there you know. And especially for someone who didn't commit such a big crime...

How many e-mail addresses / account did he get? 120,000

He could have stopped at ONE and reported the security hole to AT&T.

How much did he get from Gawker to publish the addresses?
 

tinman0

macrumors regular
Jun 5, 2008
181
3
Ok so someone hacked and got a bunch of e-mail addresses. Did he exploit/steal anyone? No. He even helped at&t by pointing out that security breach before someone else with worse intentions hacked it.
And you think that person should rot in jail for a year and more? Have you seen how is a jail inside? It's not easy to go in there you know. And especially for someone who didn't commit such a big crime...

He released the information, that's the difference.
 

j-traxx

macrumors regular
Jan 19, 2005
150
0
California
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Why sympathize with this doo doo head? If he wasn't a criminal he would have taken this to AT&T in the first place and not sell it to a techie tabloid. He wanted glory and now he has it. Gawker are a bunch of techdouches anyway.
 

djstile

macrumors regular
Jun 17, 2009
180
124
He released the information, that's the difference.

Exactly. That's the problem, the hacker does (arguably) a "good" thing by exposing a security hole. Instead of being a Good Samaritan and doing something to help society in general, they post the information for the attention. Now Email addresses aren't NEARLY the same thing as credit card numbers or something, but the gov. should (and did) make a very tough stand against this sort of Cybercrime.
 

thecypher

macrumors regular
Jul 10, 2008
122
0
I'm no anarchist but from my perspective, these folks did the world a huge favor. By exposing a security flaw without any malicious intentions, they have made use all a little safer from those who possess the same skills but use their powers for evil. So I tip my hats to them and would like to see the most lenient sentencing the law permits.

Sorry it doesn't work that way. Bottom line is they caused financial damage to a business. If their intention was not malicious and they were "only doing public service" as you think, they would have contacted AT&T and told them there is a flaw in their system. Which they didn't. Instead they chose to get name and fame (infamy in their case) and published hundreds of SIM IDs and email addresses on the Internet.

Agreed publishing email addresses seems benign. But the news article says there were several high profile personalities among that list and I am sure it affects them more than an average person. It is basically an invasion of privacy and I am glad they went after them and made an example out of them. People need to know they can't do crap like this because they don't have a life and nothing better to do and expect to get away with it.

This is no different than you or me breaking into a local convenience store just because they didn't lock their door before leaving for the night and publishing this information out causing them damage. Hey technically you and I didn't steal anything from the store. We just broke in and announced publicly that they don't lock their door at night which in turn made other crooks steal from the store and cause them financial damage. So are we responsible in any way? Hell yes!
 

phillipduran

macrumors 65816
Apr 30, 2008
1,055
607
Ok so someone hacked and got a bunch of e-mail addresses. Did he exploit/steal anyone? No. He even helped at&t by pointing out that security breach before someone else with worse intentions hacked it.
And you think that person should rot in jail for a year and more? Have you seen how is a jail inside? It's not easy to go in there you know. And especially for someone who didn't commit such a big crime...

Agreed, this jail time is nuts.

Doesn't AT&T put my name, my phone number and my address in a big book and drop it of at EVERYONES doorstep in my city every single year?

What in the world is criminal about posting email addresses? Don't most people put their email addresses on their business cards and hand them out to people?

The fault lies with AT&T who put a web interface that takes sim numbers and kicks back email addresses.

This is like them posting the email list on the front door of their business and then you getting 18 months in jail for taking a picture of it.
 

Furrybeagle

macrumors 6502
Sep 13, 2004
285
4
Bottom line is they caused financial damage to a business.

So AT&T screws up and other people are responsible for their financial loss? So, can Microsoft sue Apple for taking advantage of a botched Vista release? Businesses are not more important than people.

Agreed publishing email addresses seems benign. But the news article says there were several high profile personalities among that list and I am sure it affects them more than an average person.

Oh, so you're saying if the email addresses belonged to a bunch of poor people, it wouldn't matter? Nice.

It is basically an invasion of privacy and I am glad they went after them and made an example out of them. People need to know they can't do crap like this because they don't have a life and nothing better to do and expect to get away with it.

And you see absolutely no reason to hold AT&T even partially accountable?

This is no different than you or me breaking into a local convenience store just because they didn't lock their door before leaving for the night and publishing this information out causing them damage. Hey technically you and I didn't steal anything from the store. We just broke in and announced publicly that they don't lock their door at night which in turn made other crooks steal from the store and cause them financial damage. So are we responsible in any way? Hell yes!

Is that really breaking in? It's illegal to open an unlocked door now?

Here's a more apt comparison: this is like walking into the lobby of AT&T, seeing that someone dropped a stack of papers in the corner, and publishing them on the Internet.

Should they still be held accountable for releasing the information instead of notifying AT&T? Probably. But screaming hackers and throwing them in prison for a year (to ten years) is the wrong way to go about this.
 
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TheNerdyNurse

macrumors newbie
Mar 21, 2011
12
0
Seems like AT&T should be faced with the bigger punishment, since they are the ones that are not protecting their customers.
 

RawBert

macrumors 68000
Jan 19, 2010
1,729
70
North Hollywood, CA
Zero. Hacking doesn't exactly take a genius, and it shows lack of morals and in this case lack of good judgement. Getting caught makes it worse. Not exactly what recommends you to any employer.

Apparently, hackers are still getting hired by big companies.

June 28, 2011
CBS Link: Facebook hires hacker George "Geohot" Hotz

George "Geohot" Hotz, famous for iPhone hacking skills and reverse-engineering Sony's PlayStation 3, is officially working at Facebook, CNET reports.
 
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