Colorado Researchers Crack Internet Chess Club

edpin writes "University of Colorado at Boulder students hacked the 30,000-plus-member Internet Chess Club as part of research funded by the National Science Foundation. With guidance from University of Colorado at Boulder computer security researcher John Black, two students reverse-engineered the service to up their ranks and steal passwords." Update: 10/10 23:05 GMT by T : Reader Bryan Rapp points out that this story duplicates the one posted last month -- sorry about that.

Forget white hat and black hat...

[rasafras]

...what the hell are the ethics of edu-hacking? That's pretty weird, if you ask me. It could be considered like white hat except that it's done for the hacker's benefit as well, but still... it seems a little fishy. I mean, would you go through an Anarchist's Cookbook with your teacher?
Maybe that's just me. *shrug*

we should be able to mod stories

[Anonymous Coward]

if we can mod stories as dupe, we can set the threshold high enough so we can never have to deal with idiot editors posting dupes again!!!

Heh

[FiReaNGeL]

You don't have to give yourself all the trouble of defeating security to be a chess star on Internet. Just run a copy of fritz on another computer while you 'play'... instant skill!

This is why is stopped playing online. Nothing beats a real game of chess, in front of a real person anyway. Reactions from your opponent are almost as important as in poker!

Re:Meanwhile...

[mbrix]

Not in Denmark (and I suspect, many other countries). We are moving to chip-based cards instead. Actually, Denmark is almost fully converted away from magnetic cards.

Isn't this Illegal?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how this being done under the auspices of the school absolves the students from prosecution.

Can anyone explain this to me?

Re:Stealing Passwords?

[aerojad]

I agree. I also wonder if this could cause any charges to be filed for acessing personal information.

Re:Another dupe, timothy?

[shawn(at)fsu]

What we need is a way to chart what editor posts the most dupes, maybe the social shamming thing that keeps crime low in countries other than the US would work well here.