Point Out A Vulnerability, Go To Jail

from the it's-the-American-way dept

A computer security analyst in Houston who simply pointed out that the wireless LAN of the county distric clerk's office was insecure, has been indicted for computer fraud. The district clerk is claiming the "intrusion" cost them $5,000 to clean up. Ok, let's get this straight: if I set up a completely insecure network, and someone points that out to me, and it costs me some money to fix my own stupid setup, I can send the guy to jail and have him fined hundreds of thousands of dollars?!? Time to reconfigure my wireless router to make it a bit less secure. Come hack away!

5 Comments | Leave a Comment..


If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...
 

Reader Comments (rss)

(Flattened / Threaded)

  1.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    sunny manchanda, Jul 27th, 2002 @ 6:40pm

    re pointing out a vulnerability.

    some people just do not get it and will never get it if we leave it to them we would still be

    in the dark ages and ruled by kings and despots

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Balmber vs. the guy on the street

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Jul 28th, 2002 @ 8:41pm

    hop on over to netstumbler.com and you'll see two headlines:

    One about this guy and another in which Steve Ballmer self-confeses to WLAN Jacking (and in fact there's some question as to just how many of the microsoft muckety-mucks "conspired" to Jack this lamers WAP).

    The point of the matter is WLAN jacking is painlessly easy to do with XP and that engauging LEO (law enforcement officials) is a particularly dangerous thing to do (just say "No!").

    The guy in the article got what he deserved and if the WAP owner (who's SSID was "Mountaineer") or his bandwidth provider doesn't pursue Microsoft for theft of service, then they're just plain stupid.

    Remember kiddies, you never know when microsoft personnel are going to be in town, jacking your precious internet bandwidth (mental note to route non-IP Microsoft endpoints to /dev/null)

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    But I thought the airwaves are free?

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Jul 29th, 2002 @ 9:08am

    ATH0+++

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  

    Network license

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Jul 29th, 2002 @ 10:25am

    There should be a license in order to get onto a network. This would help keep some of these friggin morons safe from themselves.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  

    Pointing out a problem...

    identicon
    Randy Davis, Feb 25th, 2003 @ 8:50am

    If someone did not point out the WLAN security problem, would they be helping the (alledged)terrorists ?
    And possibly risk being jailed/find for that ?

    Ahh....
    If there were only more "perfect" people that did NOT have the urge to carry rocks and look for glass houses.


    1) Mind Your Own Business...
    2) Treat others at least as nice you would like to be treated...
    3) If your are going to act like a arsehole, expect to see a a lot of crap

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


Add Your Comment

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Save me a cookie
  • Note: A CRLF will be replaced by a break tag (<br>), all other allowable HTML will remain intact
  • Allowed HTML Tags: <b> <i> <a> <em> <br> <strong> <blockquote> <hr> <tt>


A word from our Sponsors...
Follow Techdirt
Flattr rss rss
From the Techdirt Archive...
A word from our Sponsors...

Close

Email This