Re:FBI arrests LulzSec member "recursion" for Sony Pictures ...
by wnight on Friday September 23, 2011 @05:29AM
(#3029379)
Ugh, physical analogies. That's my point. You're stuck in a world of things. Where things go missing or get broken.
This is data. Physical laws apply badly, especially when applied in fear by people who hardly seem to understand the domain. A webserver is giving out data. "Hacking" it is just tricking it into not checking what it's handing out.
Imagine a webserver as a really dumb employee. "Give documents in the first box, labelled 'public' to anyone. ..." If you've ended up telling that employee to give a copy of your financials to anyone who asks for it, because you forgot to tell them it wasn't a public document, it's your fault.
Not only would preventing this in law involve criminalizing many protocol errors and mistakes but it merely serves to hide the real problem - trusting inherently weak security.
This is data. Physical laws apply badly, especially when applied in fear by people who hardly seem to understand the domain. A webserver is giving out data. "Hacking" it is just tricking it into not checking what it's handing out.
Imagine a webserver as a really dumb employee. "Give documents in the first box, labelled 'public' to anyone. ..." If you've ended up telling that employee to give a copy of your financials to anyone who asks for it, because you forgot to tell them it wasn't a public document, it's your fault.
Not only would preventing this in law involve criminalizing many protocol errors and mistakes but it merely serves to hide the real problem - trusting inherently weak security.