Anonymous To Release Sun, News of the World Emails 363
siliconbits writes "After having hacked Rupert Murdoch's flagship news website, thesun.co.uk, and redirecting its readers to a spoof front page and pilfering its email servers, Anonymous' unofficial mouthpiece, Sabu, has revealed that the group is 'sitting on [the sun's & NOTW's] emails' with a press release from Anonymous & possibly more coming in a few hours. While that website has already been taken down, the email bounty is likely to be potentially more damaging with Sabu releasing details of two of the Sun's top three employees, Rebekah Wade and Bill Akass, the former editors of the Sun and News of the World respectively as well as Lee Wells & Danny Rogers, Editorial Support Manager at News International and Sun Online Editorial Manager respectively, as a taster of what's coming next."
I love this (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I love this (Score:5, Insightful)
It's good to see them getting a taste of their own medicine.
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And payback will be a bitch.
There is a problem with this eye for an eye mentality. It will come back to bite you back.
Fine the CIA and FBI cannot find the people.... But a team of unethical reporters I am surprised they haven't knocked on the guys door yet to give him a well edited interview.
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You know you have a PR problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You know you have a PR problem (Score:4, Informative)
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It's not mine, I swear!
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This just in, Rupert Murdoch was attacked!
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/07/19/uk.murdoch.attack/index.html [cnn.com]
with a plate full of shaving cream, not a knife or a gun :-(
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Oops... Seems Murdoch stepped in a big pile of shhhhh . . . aving cream
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Be nice and clean!
Shave every day and you'll always feel keen...
Hacking innocent people's email accounts?!?!? (Score:5, Funny)
How could they do such a cruel thing to the good people at News of the World?!?!?
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Pay back is a bitch.
Re:Hacking innocent people's email accounts?!?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if Anon and Lulzlzlz (what the fuck ever) realize that they are and have been doing the very same thing they are pissed at The Sun for doing. They just have different targets that in their minds, deserve it.
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Maybe. I do think that in a technical sense you're totally right. But in a political sense, releasing these emails is perhaps more akin to releasing the state dept cables. This release is going to change the way the police and politicians are able to cover this whole thing up. It's going to open the door on far more scrutiny from "legitimate press and blog" investigators, who may be able to hold wrongdoers in the emails to account publicly and therefore eventually legally.
Hacking celebrities and royal famil
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Hacking into accounts that are not yours is hacking into accounts that are not yours.
Motivation is irrelevant.
Re:Hacking innocent people's email accounts?!?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, I think it is more severe to hack and release the emails of a company/person facing both civil and criminal charges/actions.
Now all the internal email and communications that could be subpoenaed to discover the depth of this scandal and criminal or civil liability can be questioned for it's legitimacy. after all, their servers were hacked and some activist group had complete control over them for an unspecified period of time in which they covered their tracks making it difficult to know exactly what they did while in control of it.
So in court, it would go like this, well, MR CEO, did you tell the reporter to hack the voice mail as is stated in this document? You Honor, I have never ordered anyone to do anything of the sort, it was not a company policy and if it was know, the people responsible would have been reported to the authorities and terminated, that accusation is a fabrication created by an activist group calling itself anonymous who hacked our servers and planted evidence of what they wanted the case to become.
But the investigators have this email sent from your computer. Well, your honor, those documents were retrieved by investigators after the activist group had illegally accessed our servers and one of our IT staff showed us how these headers and identifying information can be fabricated like in this example that looks very realistic as if it was an email you sent under your court email account but from a Disney world resort 3000 miles away and 5 minute into the future from now. IF this was planted on the courts servers by an activist group, would it be evidence that you went to Orlando Florida instead of presiding over this hearing?
The judge would then order the evidence after the break in unreliable unless supported by something the activist group did not hack into. This would likely result in only low level employees who admitted to the deeds getting into trouble.
Re:Hacking innocent people's email accounts?!?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hacking innocent people's email accounts?!?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Both groups do it for both those reasons (albeit Anonymous' system for turning the profit is far less well-developed); you just happen to agree politically with one of them.
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Substitute beating people up for shooting. Incomplete change of analogies.
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So by that reasoning it's ok for someone to go around beating people up because you suspect them of being corrupt but it's not ok to beat someone up because of their color, or gender, or color of the hair or because you were paid to?
Absolutely! Vigilante justice, while illegal and inappropriate where there is a legitimate justice system, is unequivocally morally superior to racially-motivated hate crimes. Do you really even have to ask this question?
Re:Hacking innocent people's email accounts?!?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
More like evidence was tampered.
First, listening to voicemail often clears the "new voicemail" flag, and unless you're really anal, no one listens to every voice mail they have daily.
Perhaps the bigger crime is the fact they destroyed evidence - the voice mailbox was full. They deleted voicemails to make room for more. Sure we can hope the reporters deleted the unimportant ones, but can you really be sure?
Lulzsec at least isn't tampering with these things - these emails exist, and they're releasing it. They haven't come in, deleted emails or read unread email (and fail to reset them so the recipient never notices they haven't actually read the email yet).
Yes, there were mistakes on all sides. But leaving my front door unlocked doesn't give anyone the right to enter my house, and especially not to go through my computer reading my email, answering machine/voice mail
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But the contents of the emails may now be in question. Lulzsec could just as easily plant emails as read them... It may just cause people to have to go back to tape but anything not backed-up could have its authenticity in question.
Re:Hacking innocent people's email accounts?!?!? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hacking innocent people's email accounts?!?!? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Err...I'm confused. Help me out here.
Lulzsec at least isn't tampering with these things
So it's okay, or at least tolerable, if they go in somewhere they're not allowed, so long as they just look and don't destroy or modify? Okay...
leaving my front door unlocked doesn't give anyone the right to enter my house
Ah, it's not okay then. Even if they just look around and don't touch anything?
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Err...I'm confused. Help me out here.
Lulzsec at least isn't tampering with these things
So it's okay, or at least tolerable, if they go in somewhere they're not allowed, so long as they just look and don't destroy or modify? Okay...
leaving my front door unlocked doesn't give anyone the right to enter my house
Ah, it's not okay then. Even if they just look around and don't touch anything?
Wellll you know it's interesting - I think it was stupid for LS to get into this business, but I'd rather have them doing it, in general, than not. Maybe it's the honesty of the thing? They cop to it immediately, often before it is discovered by other means. Certainly they're assholes, but I'd rather have groups like this charging into the shadows of potential wrongdoing than wait for justice from a system riddled with corruption. What happens next is someone starts poisoning the data, and then things becom
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The phone hackers interfred with a search for a missing child. By deleting her voice mails it was assumed that she was still alive days later when the police checked.
Forget the royal family parts they directly interefered and hampered the search for a missing child.
For that alone they deserve everything they are getting.
Re:Hacking innocent people's email accounts?!?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
What about:
1) Hacking the phones of the police officers investigating the phone hacking case?
2) Bribing police officers for information on those same officers.
3) Blackmailing some of those officers with information obtained by 1) and 2).
4) Bribing the officers they couldn't blackmail in 3 to drop the case.
5) Hacking the phones of politicians.
6) Bribing police (and doctors?) for information on politicians.
7) Using the information gained in 5) and 6) to dictate favorable legislation.
8) Using his control of diverse news media to interfere with elections.
9) Using the threat of interference to influence politicians
There's a lot more to this case than just the phone hacking. Picking on "regular people" is what outraged a lot of people, but now they might actually pay attention to the other, more important, stuff.
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Murdoch's employees, owing to Murdoch's leadership, believed they lived in a world where laws against hacking and bribing didn't exist, and therefore hacked everyone they were curious about and bribed everyone they were not curious about, in the common goal of gathering salacious information about people they were curious about. And they also believed they lived in a world where blackmail was not illegal, so once they had this curious information, they felt no reason not to use it, even if it meant the man
NO REAL HARM?!?! (Score:4, Informative)
The phone hackers destroyed no property, deprived no owners of any of its use. I don't think there is any real harm here.
NO HARM?! In case you missed the details of the original case that started the whole firestorm...
In 2002, Milly Dowler was kidnapped, then murdered later. When she went missing, News of the World hacked her phone. Seeing her voice mailbox was full, they deleted some messages (deleting potential evidence) so they could maybe get some new information. Meanwhile, the police saw that 'Milly' accessed her phone mailbox, so they downgraded her case, treating her as a low priority runaway. That meant that critical time tracking her was lost that could've got the police to her sooner and potentially saved her life.
No harm indeed...
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A Whistler Blower is someone who has specific knowledge of wrong doing and brings it to light.
Anon has no such specific knowledge other than what was reported and is already in the light. Yet they decide to go ahead and illegally hack into their system and steal informtion in the hopes of finding more evidence.
Pretty long stretch to call them a whistler blower.
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So you won't mind then if I break into your home, rape your wife, kill your children and kick your dog. After all, there is no Right or Wrong.
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Funny but doesn't Anonymous do that exact same thing? I mean dumping users email addresses and password hashes hurts the users as well as the companies.
Re:Hacking innocent people's email accounts?!?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep - releasing userid/passwords is the same thing as hacking into dead childern's voicemails for scoops.
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Nope. I am just playing the same trick that has been played a lot by politicians, media and corporations. What's wrong using the same logic now to differentiate and highlight the bigotry? Oh I see - you don't like it when it's against your argument.
If you live by flawed logic, you die by flawed logic.
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Nope. I am just playing the same trick that has been played a lot by politicians, media and corporations. What's wrong using the same logic now to differentiate and highlight the bigotry? Oh I see - you don't like it when it's against your argument.
If you live by flawed logic, you die by flawed logic.
None of what you said makes any sense.
Re:Hacking innocent people's email accounts?!?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not unless the last guy is willing to put his own eye out. He should be able to evade 6 Billion blind people, right?
Re:Hacking innocent people's email accounts?!?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
A world that is blind is still better than a world where only the wrongdoers keep their eyes, after all.
As a wise man has said, All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Re:Hacking innocent people's email accounts?!?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what happens when he law fails. Murdoch and his ilk cannot and will not be punished in our current system of law. Vigilante justice is wrong, but it is the only justice left to deal with these folks. If the law would do its job this would not happen.
No, he was foolish. (Score:3)
Interestingly , the whole overblowing of the Tianamen square events has only recently been exposed by wikileaks
As an aside, passive resistance has never accomplished much. Worker's movement didn't achieve 8 hour working time by bending down their heads and politely voicing discontent, for example - they did so by a series of massive strikes.
I expect you are going to come up with Gandhi, but even he didn't
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An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
That sounds great until a dude takes over the world with a pointy stick.
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In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is often crucified.
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Blind Crucifier: Let me just put a nail through your hand here...ok, did I get it?
One-eyed Victim: [with nail between two fingers] Yeah...err...ouch!
Blind Crucifier: And the other hand...did I get that one?
One-eyed Victim: Yeah...boy, that stings.
Blind Crucifier: And now onto the feet.
One-eyed Victim: But your partner already did them.
Blind Crucifier: But he didn't tell me.
One-eyed Victim: I'm looking right at them...I think I'd know if I had nails through my feet.
Blind Crucifier: Okay...well, let that be a
Re:Hacking innocent people's email accounts?!?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
At the end of the game, The king and the pawn go back in the same box.
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Baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical.
Compromising the investigation (Score:5, Insightful)
While I'm quite enjoying what Anonymous/Lulzsec are doing, I hope it does not compromise the criminal investigations that are to follow.
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Re:Compromising the investigation (Score:4, Informative)
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The search for her daughter was already national news, but not the details of the case - That's true.
But think back a few years. How many people on the jury selected back in '95 were asking, "Wait... OJ who?
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I think that applies only to evidence obtained by the court. Not criminals turning evidence in against other criminals. e.g. Paedophile jailed after burglars with a conscience tip off police about child abuse pictures on stolen laptop [dailymail.co.uk] ( new window )
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Re:Compromising the investigation (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether or not the evidence is tainted depends on a few factors. First off, if the evidence is illegally obtained by a third party not under the influence of the authorities, the evidence is not automatically tainted. Chain of custody becomes an important issue, however, since the prosecution would have to pretty much prove that the evidence was not altered by the third party. However, the most important one to this example, I think, would be the exceptions to the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine. Namely, whether the authorities would have inevitably discovered these documents in the course of their investigations (assuming full compliance with warrant issued by the court). I don't think there is any way the authoities would NOT serve a warrant for those emails.
There are of course other factors involved in whether the evidence is admissable. But a third party acting completely independently from the authorities acquiring evidence illegally does not make that evidence inadmissable, no matter whether or not it taints the jury pool.[1]
And for what it's worth... without public outcry, it's quite possible that the alleged guilty parties at NOTW would enter a plea bargain and have the evidence suppressed (legally or extra-legally, they have a ton of influence). It's why this is such a big scandal... that's exactly what they've been doing for years. Public access to the information is the foundation of the only weapons we have against the government-corporate-media complex[2] that subverts the US democracy.
[1] IANAL. If you want a real legal analysis, consult a real lawyer. YMMV. Half of what I know about law I learned from Perry Mason, Colombo, and Law and Order. The other half comes from researching topics relevant to slashdot discussion on the internet. Do not use my post as legal advice. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
[2] I don't think I'm a conspiracy theorist, no matter how much that line makes me sound like one. It's obvious to me that US Legislators are far more beholden to the companies that pay their election bills and hire them once they are out of office than they are to the public; especially so for media companies, who by-and-large control what information the public has.
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Re:Compromising the investigation (Score:5, Informative)
If the authorities made no effort to induce the illegal acquisition of the evidence, then it would still be admissable in US court AFAIK. The evidence if only tainted if the authorities, or someone acting at their behest (not a third-party with no link to the authorities), performs an illegal source. Chain of custody would be an issue, I would think, because it would have to be proven (more or less) that the emails were not altered after being lifted from NOTW's servers.
*I know this from watching Perry Mason, Columbo, and Law & Order reruns; IANAL; YMMV; if you want legal advice consult a real lawyer; Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
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That's a more or less correct reading, based upon your exposure. However, there would be no chain of custody here because it went from the defendants, to a third party (Lulzsec) and then (presumably) to the authorities. (Proper chain of custody would be something like: scene of the crime -> lab technician -> detective -> prosecutor.) Instead, a prosecutor can take these emails along with additional evidence to get a warrant for the originals, thereby getting a "clean" set of evidence. The clean
Re:Compromising the investigation (Score:4, Insightful)
Good point, that's how Batman is able help win legit convictions: he's not acting on authorization of the police, so when he leaves the criminals at the crime scene bundled up with the evidence, Gotham City can use all they found in court.
I mean, if all that happened in real life.
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I could not thought of a better way to make that point. Well said.
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and we all know teh GODDAMN BATMAN never beats up the wrong guy...
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Re:Compromising the investigation (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope it does not compromise the criminal investigations
You mean the investigations that Scotland Yard has already swept under the rug and tried to kill several times? Yeah, we wouldn't want to compromise those thorough investigations by competent, unbiased police officers. Shit, I heard they're going to put Sherlock Holmes on it, just the make sure that Scotland Yard's unblemished reputation in this matter is upheld.
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According to this article [macleans.ca] at least part of the reason Scotland Yard has tried to sweep this under the rug is due to the bribes and blackmail from News Corp.
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I hope it does not compromise the criminal investigations that are to follow
You mean, these [cnet.com] investigations?
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Consequences be damned! They have a point they want to make.
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I am much more interested in seeing LulzSec become bedfellows with the government. Also, wikileaks. Once they start using information from these sources, the establishment must admit they do society some good. Both organizations while operating illegally are operating on moral grounds: that truth and fairness prevail. Meanwhile we have the legitimate government continually hiding information that is "not in the best interest" (according to them) for people to know. Who is worse? Well absent perfectly trans
Incoming Bad Pun (Score:3)
Pay back is a bitch (Score:2)
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Considering the irrational hate and fear, is now up to physical attacks against Murdoch. I'm sure that people are a-okay with things like this too.
Yep and good job people. You want to suck up to a partisan ideology. That's fine. You want to take your partisan ideology to the next step? Well that's okay too. You want to keep going and physically assault people because you don't like their business? You're just as fucked up as the person you claim to be railing against.
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Okay, so . . . (Score:2)
When is Anonymous going to hack Wikileaks as payback for Wikileaks hacking people to get stuff to report?
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When you can prove that wikileaks 'hacked' people. Publishing information from insiders is not same hacking. Try logic 101.
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I see, and what has not been proven yet after few resignation, one dead body and more importantly few _arrests_?
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When are they going to hack the US federal government and spread information far and wide about the Obama admin's gun running program(aka fast and the furious or project gunrunner), and attempt to violate the 2nd amendment. I'm going to guess never, but people will happily froth at the mouth over Murdoch when their own government was complicit in killing people, and enabling mexican cartels getting fire arms.
Anonymous cannot be trusted (Score:2, Interesting)
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Re:Anonymous cannot be trusted (Score:5, Insightful)
Civil Rights protesters can't be trusted -- If they're breaking the law by riding in the front of buses or participating in illegal protests speaking out the very laws that make such things illegal, or performing their "duty as a statesman" to overthrow an oppressive government (as mentioned in their original Declaration of Independence), then they can clearly NEVER be Trusted!
Are you now or have you ever been in violation of any law? Aha! Your vehicle exceeded the mandated speed limit! Your words are meaningless to me now!
Also: I do not abide by laws that are unjust, or logic that is flawed. Nor do I wait idly for the next blow from my assailant's fist.
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It wasn't Anonymous... (Score:4, Informative)
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How inconsiderate.. (Score:2)
A few years from now the Internet will be censored (Score:2)
In case anyone is wondering a few years from now why their internet liberty will be so limited, it is this kind of abuse of freedom that will get us there. Thanks in advance Anonymous et al.
If information wants to be free, let's all get tracking chips today!
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yes we should fall into line like good little citizens shouldn't we
How did this happen (Score:2)
Did the group just try to breach thesun.co.uk for the occasion or did they have the opportunity for some time and now decided to use it?
It's just somewhat convenient, but nothing rules out pure chance.
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a little advice, Mr Murdoch... (Score:2)
On second thought, go right ahead...
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If that's the case, then the U.K. needs legal reform. After all, you shouldn't be able to escape the repercussions of your actions by pretending to be someone else and talking about them. That'd be a huge legal loophole.
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it's the "fine" i have a problem with - people need to be responsible for their actions.. even if they are working under the orders of others in their job.. if they break the law they need to go to jail
i know there is problem under the military chain of command for this - but when it comes to corporations there should be zero questions.
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Yes it will. If the emails are copied and made available to the public, the police have "probable cause" to look at the originals within NI. From there it's a short step to the DPP, but if history shows us anything it will not go anywhere, though not because of the Anon/Lolz actions.
I can't see why this would make it harder to take legal action.
Re:Something Fishy (Score:4, Informative)
Why is that hard to believe? It's not the case that it's suddenly become easier to hack servers, the issue is that more people have the knowledge required to do so (and that old vulnerabilities are left unpatched). I mean, some of the hacks have been basic SQL injection or URL vulnerabilities that any competent programmer would know how to avoid. Those crappy systems have been in place for a while, people are just now starting to exploit them for the hell of it. It could have been going on all this time by groups that weren't announcing that they were doing it, like the Chinese government.
I mean, consider this: when Citibank got "hacked" a while ago, and had account details stolen, do you know what the vulnerability was? The URL of the account page looked something like this:
www.citibank.com/my_account.asp?id=<your credit card number here>
All they did was change the number and, voila, it turns out that Citibank was not bothering to authorize the logged-in user to view the given account. Once you were logged in, you could view any account. That's not exactly world-class security, that's something that most kids on the w3schools forum could warn you about. It's an embarrassment that a financial company like Citibank would pay to have something like that built by someone who doesn't know what they're doing.
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The depressing reality is that most security money these days is spent filling out paperwork, and getting exemptions where you don't meet the standards. That coupled with the fact that there's simply much, much, more stuff online now, makes hacking easier.
Summary: Alaskan Chupacabra (Score:2)
* Alaska has a Chupacabra, but it's in the water (native Alaskans refer to it as Chupacabrosaurus or Cadborosaurus).
* No one has actually seen it but some video may exist (no one knows what's on the video so an Alaskan Chupacabra can't be ruled out).
* The fact that no one has seen it proves it is not only hiding but intelligent.
* Calls to Alaska's Bigfoot have not been returned proving an Alaska
Sun emails (Score:2)
And here I was looking forward to finding out what *exactly* the erstwhile Sun Microsystems was thinking when it ran a fine tech company into the ground.