IIRC there was a recent story here in Germany where a court decided that the blame is entirely on the website owner, and incrementing an integer didn't constitute as hacking, as no security measures were circumvented (as a lack of authorization checks meant no security measures were in place).

So I'm hopeful that the courts are slowly starting to wisen up in that respect.

Looks like there is just a little bit more to that story...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev

Didn't he also give the data he found to Gawker before notifying AT&T of the issue? That seems like a pretty key difference here, but I don't know what weev was charged and convicted for.

"Conspiracy to access a computer without authorization", which was and is completely preposterous. The Gawker part is completely immaterial, it was still a total travesty of justice. The judgement was later overturned on procedural grounds rather than on the merits (which it should have been). He did nothing that merited imprisonment, and even less so his mistreatment there.

It's more accurate to say it was a travesty of law, but probably not of justice.

Yes, but "weev" is also a well-renowned internet "troll". Basically - he appears to take joy out of denigrating, humiliating, insulting and doxxing other people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev

He's also a neo-Nazi and white supremacist. I do believe in free speech, but some of the things he does seem to take it way too far.

And he famously doxed Kathy Sierra, a female technical writer who created the Head First series. I actually quite like some of the books in the series, and it's incredibly sad to hear incidents like this which actively discourage females in tech.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Sierra

I suspect there's more to the AT&T incident than just, oh, I found a flaw, let me responsible report this to the relevant parties in responsible disclosure.

Bad laws and a corrupt justice system are infinitely more dangerous than a single man, however unpleasant he may be. People pointed out at the time, that the CFAA is totally broken, but nobody listened because the victim was unsympathetic. Well, now we see in TFA how nothing has changed.

"Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!"

And it should be noted, that weev's turn towards overt neonazism (rather than just antisocial trolling) took place in prison, where he was mistreated.

Weev was very much a neo-nazi even before he was imprisoned, but I suspect he limited it to private channels.

I once infiltrated some of the IRC channels he used in 2010 or so and have logs of him saying extremely antisemitic things in earnest.

(The groups I infiltrated also doxxed people and used that information in smear campaigns, which is why I'm using a throwaway for this comment. I checked HN's rules and guidelines and couldn't see anything against this; if I'm wrong about this, I apologise.)

The GNAA was probably the first tech group to play the "am I Nazi or am I just joking?" dogwhistle with the earnestness we often see today.

in some public transport company ticket ordering website, someone discovered that the ticket's price parameter is coming from the client side. he decided to bought a very cheap one, then reported the incident. next day the National Terror Defence knocked on his door.