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A comment on Arrest of WannaCry researcher sends chill through security community. Parent comment

Re:Arrest of WannaCry researcher sends chill through securit... by wildmusings on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:25PM (#14931919)
As to your first example, there seems to be this pervasive idea in tech culture that something shouldn't be a serious crime or tort because it is so easy to do. I see the argument very often in cases of unauthorized access and copyright infringement.

Murder is also rather easy, and we execute people for it.

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Re:Arrest of WannaCry researcher sends chill through securit... by tptacek on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:27PM (#14931940)
That's not what he's saying. He's saying that independent of how easy it is to do, it's also something that professional security people do routinely. And he's right. But that's not the basis of the charge against Aurenheimer.
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Re:Arrest of WannaCry researcher sends chill through securit... by wildmusings on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:27PM (#14931948)
>That's not what he's saying. He's saying that independent of how easy it is to do, it's also something that professional security people do routinely. And he's right. But that's not the basis of the charge against Aurenheimer.

It's certainly part of what he said:

>but it also wasn’t exactly hardcore hacking; IIRC he just changed a URL parameter.

The difficulty of carrying out an action is completely irrelevant to its legality.

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Re:Arrest of WannaCry researcher sends chill through securit... by Ilurkyeahsowat on Friday August 04, 2017 @06:16PM (#14932825)
Even if he did attempt to sell the data, is it illegal to sell data that is freely available on the internet (honest question, I couldnt find a solid answer via googling)? It might be against TOS.
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Re:Arrest of WannaCry researcher sends chill through securit... by tptacek on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:28PM (#14931960)
I agree with you that the "hardcoreness" of what Aurenheimer did is a red herring.
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