Re: Pentester convicted..

[mike () genxweb net]

No matter how noble he thought his actions to be the bottom line is that
he unlawfully accessed the system and copied several private records of
students. He never obtained permission as a pen tester to carry out any
tests against that site. His initial discovery should of stopped at the
passive point or in all theory should not of started at all. Once he
suspected there to be a issue he should of contacted the school. Instead
he took the active approached and exploited the site "stealing" student
information.

Now I don’t agree fully one way or the other on his actions or the courts
ruling as there is always things left out of the story or altered by the
press.


> Hey there pen-testers, take this with a grain of salt, it just got me
> excited.  I am really interested in everyones opinion on the matter or
> corporate responsibility and ownership.
>
> <RANT>
> In an article posted to slashdot today
> (http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/10/112259&from=rss) a man
> has been convicted of hacking when he casually and helpfully reported a
> security vulnerability to the owners of a web site, in this case The
> University of Southern California.  It reads like it was some sort of
> simple SQL injection and upon gleaning the information he reported it.
>
> What are we to do as a community I ask?  We should we, the good guys,
> who are paid for our knowledge and ability to exploit mistakes,
> oversights, and weaknesses then professionally report them to aid in the
> securing of information capital (or anyone who reports the flaw for that
> matter) worry about prosecution.  It lends itself to a forcing the
> technical community to sit on their laurels and wait for the people who
> don't report issues to exploit them.  Further it sounds very clear that
> had he not notified them, they would have never known.
>
> A security pro notices a flaw, checks to make sure he is not on crack by
> 'flipping a bit', deems the threat viable and is likely to be exploited,
> notifies the owners, then get arrested and charged with unauthorized
> access.  We, as a or even The security community, should push
> corporations, governments, and organized body's to take responsibility
> and ownership of their problems.  If they publish a site that is flawed
> or exposing information then they are authorizing the retrieval of that
> information.  I'm not advocating that they laws should allow any jerk to
> try and brute his or her way in to a public or private web site, but
> come on.
>
> If someone leaves their wallet in the park with no guard or protection,
> I pick it up and bring it back to the owner, the owner didn't want me to
> have it but I brought it back to him.  Why in the hell should I have to
> go to jail for returning it to him, why should I/we be punished for
> doing the right thing?
>
> I acknowledge this to be a rant but there must but some way to insist
> that when people make something available to the public that it is their
> responsibility to safeguard it and appreciate not persecute someone who
> let's them know (for free I might add) that a weakness exists.  This is
> simple scapegoating, the University did something not advisable as a
> good practice and instead of owning up to it they villafied a
> professional pen-tester for offering valid advice.
>
> </RANT>
>
>
> Thanks,
> Bill
>
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Concerned about Web Application Security? 
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Choice Award from eWeek. As attacks through web applications continue to rise, 
you need to proactively protect your applications from hackers. Cenzic has the 
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