Wintermind said:
Okay, you guys seem to ultimately be missing my point? They've actually done a useful service by exposing websites that have shit terrible security. They've also done a bad thing by releasing tons of login data, which wouldn't be as bad if people weren't complete fucktards and USED DIFFERENT FUCKING PASSWORDS FOR THINGS THAT ARE IMPORTANT.
Point ? Which point. That people are dumb ? Like that is any excuse really.
You still get in jail if you drive away in someones car because the owner forgot to close the door and take the keys with him. Was he dumb ? Yes. Does it mean you are doing him a favour when you exploit his stupidness ? No.
Hands down. Those people are doing NO ONE a favour. Hackers like Lulziness do such things for DECADES not just since gaming has become so huge. And has it changed anything ? You still have companies which give nothing about security (see Sonny now).
There are better ways how to address issues. Making it public for example. Telling the companies and the consumers about the holes WITHOUT exploiting them. The German Chaos Computer Club is EXAXTLY doing this. Finding holes and telling it to the people/companies they reported many issues about online banking, Microsoft and other companiese and helped to fix those THAT is doing people a favour. Now if the company is not fixing it and it gets exploited. People can sue them. You don't have to act like a criminal to do something "good".
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korindabar said:
If you entrusted your money and personal information to a party which you believed to be "secure" and found out they were just leaving it all on a table in the food court of a local mall, you should be just as upset with the people who stole it as the people who left it there.
I read this quite often. And even a good friend of mine mentioned it. Just that this is not either about Sonny, EA or Biowhore being dicks. That is a different story.
It is about those punks which get in those companies stealing in formations and starting mayhem with it seeing them self and some others as a cooler Internet version of V or Robbin Hood. But they are not ridding with Butch Cassidy as his Sun dance Kids nor have they learned their hacking from Billy the Kid.
What ever if some company acts like idiots or not is no excuse for criminal actions against them just to "prove a point" - The issue is that some actually romanticise and heroize their actions knowing that what they do is still wrong but they are doing it for a "greater good". What a bullshit.
By the way. There are many ways how to show the consumer that they are unsafe. And honestly. How many times has it now been mentioned that all those "online databases" are insecure ? Even Mark Zuckerberg agrees that Face book is not using "Privacy" as most important aspect because he believes their users feel fine with sharing their informations with others in the public (and it is true that new generations care less about privacy and data integrity then before if you ask me a pretty bad evolution but hey I avoid Face book and all those other crap like the plague)
What those Internet-hooligans do either to Sonny or other companies feels for me like blowing up some oil platform in the ocean to prove that "they cause pollution". Makes sense. No.
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To make one thing clear. I HATE what happens with games currently where you need thousands of accounts and "online registrations" just to play your FUCKING SINGLEPLAYER game. Sure. Not only a ton of security issues (like shown now) but also fucking annoying. But I blame the people behind this concept of this account-madness for a different reason and not because some Internet hooligans decided to blow those networks up.