Interesting test. What if you set your user agent to chrome instead of firefox and that grants you access to a website?
Fwiw, from my readings of similar cases, this seems similar to how the courts read the law. Any access you can achieve without material deception is valid. There was a case on here a while back where a couple of reporters filed a FOIA request and the city accidentally put records not meant for release in the Dropbox folder. Reporters downloaded the accidentally-added files, city sued. The city ended up settling because it looked like the court was going to rule against them.
The court's logic was basically that by allowing access to the information, you have de facto authorized the user to access it. It would be impossible to tell whether you can legally access any information if the counterparty can give you access and then decide you shouldn't have seen it when you do access it.
The website is at fault. This is no different than lying about your religion to bypass a discriminatory shop owner.
A naive generalization might say that "lying" by setting a header = illegal. But clearly there is a difference between setting the Authorization header and setting the User-Agent header.
But what about headers that are not so well-defined? What about custom headers?
I'm not disagreeing with you, but these are the first questions that come to mind.
It seems that a judge would have to carefully consider the design of the system, and whether the vector that granted access was something that was clearly negligent on the part of the site owner, or was truly an attack vector and deemed illegal. But it seems difficult to formulate a universal test for this.
No. If you falsify information indicating that you have authorization to access the site, it doesn't matter what header it's in. Conversely, if you falsify information that has no bearing on whether you have authorization to access the site, it also doesn't matter what header it's in.
You are either authorized to access the site (or URL, or whatever) or you are not. What tools you use to do so are only relevant if they cause you to generate accesses (eg network requests) that you are not authorized to make. By construction, configuring one tool to generate accesses as they would have been generated by another tool does not produce unauthorized accesses unless that other tool's normal accesses would be themselves be unauthorized.
Ahh, but here's where things get tricky. Who decides that the information has no bearing on whether you have authorization to access the site?
Imagine a situation where a very poorly designed site allows "My-Obscure-User-Agent", but denies all other User Agents. This is obviously a horrible design, but if the intent of the developer was to authorize access to a specific set of internal clients, identified by a unique/non-standard user-agent, how would you classify the act of changing one's browser settings to send the accepted agent?
User Agent is a great example of something that has a pretty well-defined purpose (and that purpose has nothing to do with authorization), but has also been misused by naive or lazy developers to control access to sites.
> to authorize access to a specific set of internal clients,
Are you, the person, authorized to access the site? If yes, setting a User Agent header to "My-Obscure-User-Agent" is truthful (insofar as it bears on whether you (the person) are authorized), regardless of whether you are using the prescribed internal client. If you are not authorized, the use of said internal client doesn't change that.
Edit: as a analogy, suppose you took a job and your employer provided you with a uncomfortable uniform jacket which your employment contract stipulated you must wear when on the job. If you acquired a more comfortable jacket and dyed it to resemble the uniform, your employer would (arguably) be within their rights to refuse you access (blocking by user-agent), but if they let you in, that does not mean you have entered (the employee-only portions of) your workplace without authorization. Same applies to cars, phones, power tools, etc; you may have done something wrong by bringing them to work, but that something is not unauthorized entry.
> configuring one tool to generate accesses as they would have been generated by another tool does not produce unauthorized accesses unless that other tool's normal accesses would be themselves be unauthorized.
Therefore: When you generate a request that spoofs the obscure user agent string, it is authorized only if you were also authorized to use the obscure agent. The string is a secret like any other, even if it's a secret shared by the entire group of people who were provided with the obscure agent.
On the other hand, is it really a secret if the agent tells it to every server that the agent connects to? At some point it's not a secret if little care is taken to protect it (and the name of the header has some bearing on what care is taken, for example whether it ends up stored in clear text in access logs...).
"it is authorized if and only if you were also authorized", but otherwise yes, exactly.
| A | B |A-only-if-B|A-if-and-only-if-B|
|false|false| true | true |
|false|true | TRUE | FALSE |
|true |false| false | false |
|true |true | true | true |
However, if the columns of your matrix were modified to compare "if" versus "[if and] only if" (where square brackets represent an optional component that does absolutely nothing), I'd agree with the logic, being analogous to the difference between OR and XOR (for the boolean sense of OR, not the English sense which is akin to XOR).
And now I'm not sure I'm not the one who isn't reading things properly. (And that sentence probably doesn't help matters.)
I'll point to (the "only if" part of) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_and_only_if#Distinction_fro..., which I think agrees with me and disagrees with you, assuming I'm not misreading one or both.
I think Congress' intent with CCFA was to criminalize hacking. There are already laws against fraud, so we don't need a deceitfulness test to catch, say, social engineering. The problem I think is that CCFA was written in 1986 and not enough people understood what hacking was well enough to write it down clearly in the law, so instead the "excess of authorized access" language is in the law, and has been used to criminalize lots of things that aren't really hacking and Congress didn't intend to criminalize with the CCFA.
I haven’t read the decision closely enough yet to see how well developed that idea is.
edit: I certainly don't agree that the distinction between access to a file in a file cabinet and a record on a computer should be significant. I think it's a dumb law. But the unauthorized access test is straightforward. If I work at a company that disallows internet browsing other than for work purposes and I visit my facebook page, I think that's a clear case of hacking under the "authorized access" test, and my only real defense would be that I needed to check facebook for work.
Yes. And SCOTUS's problem is that they think the punishment for visiting facebook at work shouldn't be the same as the punishment for stealing company records - and that's fine, and of course something I agree with. But SCOTUS should actually address that directly, rather than going down this weird path of trying to warp the definition of "authorized".
I don't think they are. I think SCOTUS is looking at this, as is their wont, from a legal perspective.
We have two legal systems: civil and criminal. Both of them have the concept of "authorized." What SCOTUS has said here is that whether or not something is unauthorized may be a civil tort claim--you broke a contract--versus a criminal offense--you broke the law.
That seems to be the knot everyone is trying to untie here. It's not illegal for me to break a contract with someone. It is illegal for me to break the law.
Now, if your employer put software on your machine or on their network that prevents you from viewing Facebook, and you work around that restriction, it could be argued that you have now "hacked" their network and gained access you were not authorized to have.
The distinction is pretty clear in the ruling - if you have access, you can do X without it being considered a violation of the CFAA (doesn't mean you can't be fired, or prosecuted for other crimes leading from the actions, or other repercussions). If you don't have access, and you figure out a way to gain access, it is now a violation of the CFAA.
Don't get me wrong, I understand how that can be straightforwardly interpreted as "unauthorized access." I'm advocating for what the law should be, in my view. The idea is to make a bright line that gives a test for mens rea to avoid over-criminalization while not being too unreasonable. I'm sure there could be scenarios I haven't thought of that would turn out poorly.
This seems like a poor definition, IMO.
For example, what if I tell you I'm going to club you over the head and get access to the computer you're on. And I do so. There was no material deception. I did exactly what I said.
Another example is what if I just walk around the counter while you're not there. There is no one around to deceive.
Then there’s no hacking and you should be charged with assault or whatever else is appropriate.
> Another example is what if I just walk around the counter while you’re not there.
Then it doesn’t matter if there was an unlocked computer or an unlocked cabinet behind that counter.
There doesn’t need to be, for every illegal act X, an extra special law or punishment for “X but a computer was involved”.
People want a criminal penalty for hacking and maybe they’re right, but you shouldn’t try to cover every undesirable act that involves a computer with a single law any more than every undesirable act that involves a piece of paper is covered with one. You also shouldn’t claim that breaking down a door is the same as walking through an open one, even when both constitute (among other things) trespassing.
I mean, sure the usual "plain ol' bullying laws" might need an update to keep up with the times but a whole separate set of laws just to capture "but it used a computer" is silly.
Mind you, I also have a thing about professional sports breaking out into punchfests. They should get prosecuted for assault or whatever just the same as anyone on the street.
That's either a true threat, or assault and battery. It only becomes computer fraud if you fraudulently use my credentials to access the computer.
> Another example is what if I just walk around the counter while you're not there. There is no one around to deceive.
That's trespass, not computer fraud.
There's more than one crime on the books. Saying that something isn't computer fraud isn't claiming that all those things should be legal.
Like in this case, I think it should be bribery more than computer fraud.
Why is that trespassing? There's no sign that says I can't go behind the counter? In fact, in many cases you can go behind the counter, just you aren't expected to jump on their computer. The problem isn't that I'm behind the counter. The problem is that I'm using a computer I'm not authorized to use -- it's just whoever set up the computer didn't set up an authorization gateway.
But really access to the computer really isn't fraud. It's what you do once your at the computer that matters much more. Its authorization for the action that matter, not access authorization.
Let’s take computers out of the picture again. Suppose I know that an organization O throws out folders with sensitive data D into the trash can in their publicly-accessible lobby every Friday at 3 pm. People that want to know D pay me to come there at 2:55, root through the can and write down the pieces that they need.
Should what I am doing be illegal? Whatever your answer, is it in any way different from walking around that same lobby sniffing O’s open Wi-Fi network except for “computers were involved”?
Can I walk into a bank and take all the money from the vault if they leave it open? But yet somehow with a computer that isn't yours you seem to be stating that if you don't properly protect it then access to it by anyone who happens upon it is completely legal.
You wrote it as if it's somewhere you're not authorized to be, e.g. an Employee's Only section which would tend to be trespass. If you are authorized to be there and they leave records out that they shouldn't, I think that failure is on them and they need to improve security.
If someone leaves a database of everyone's personal details on an open webserver, that doesn't become hacking or computer fraud if someone visits the site. I mean, I don't think it should be true that I could say "you, specifically, aren't authorized to read this post" and have that morph into a federal felony.
In my view, there has to be at least some kind of notice that someone is crossing a criminal boundary. I think lying makes a decent, if imperfect, boundary. It's possible that someone can think of something better, too.
Basically, I would say that unauthorized access should require some material deception to gain access. So if you socially engineer your way in, it's unauthorized--you lied to someone. If you use a computer virus, it's unauthorized--you lied to the computer to get it to execute that code, probably misrepresenting it as some other type of data. If they set the permissions wrong or it's just an AUP thing, it's not unauthorized access. Though, as here, it might be against the law for some other reason (violation of privacy or whatever).
This would avoid catching people out because someone set permissions to give too much access or wrote overbroad AUPs that shouldn't be turned into federal felonies, while providing a nice bright line because you can actually test whether, if not for the deception, they'd have been granted access to the system, especially the computer side of that. So the people who used anonymous FTP with a fake email won't become felons because it's easy to prove the system lets in everyone no matter what their email is set to, whereas the person using someone else's credentials lied to the system about who they are and should get punished, etc.
I think that my test would be consistent with this holding, but remember that this is merely my view of how the law should be. It's not a description of how the law is, it's something I would advocate that I believe provides a reasonable boundary between authorized an unauthorized access that's both clear and testable.