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Report Security Problems, Face The Consequences

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the maybe-he-should-just-edit-the-page dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Doing a good deed has caused one man a lot of trouble in the past year. Brian K. West, a tech support junky in a SE. Oklahoman ISP is now facing felony charges due to alerting his competition about a serious security flaw in their systems. The full story can be found at LinuxFreak.org ... I find this rather disturbing that our federal government would do such a thing to someone.." The details of the story lead to some head-scratching.

6 of 552 comments (clear)

  1. The real reason for the new, higher comment IDs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    It makes deleting comments easier. In old times, if there had been a story without a #1 comment, or even #2 or #3, it would have been obvious something was deleted. With the new system, it will be much easier for people like michael to delete what they don't like without anybody noticing.

  2. Who-hoo! Land of the Free! by mindstrm · · Score: 1, Troll

    This, from the only country that forces you to go through customs & Immigration even to handle a connecting flight.
    From one of the few remaining countries with a death penalty.
    From a country that still taxes it's people even if they reside in a foreign country (Only a few countries still do this; one being Libya)

    God help us.

  3. Let him rot in jail! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Don't mess with other people's computers. It's that easy.

  4. A Deal with the Devil by Macaw2000 · · Score: 0, Troll
    While this man's plight is quite disturbing, I find it funny that Slashdot regularily buddies up to the U.S. Government when they are attacking a company they don't like (read: Microsoft) but then they don't like it when the government attacks one of their own.

    This is exactly the kind of thing that happens when a government is not kept in check. As a government grows so does their power.

  5. Re:Donations... by Anomymous+Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    I just donated. You should too.

    Why should I donate? You're giving away your money to someone who you dont know, because of what you've read online, in a very biased publication. Another reader (above) provided a second link, (http://www.bkw.org/pdf/oklahoman-news-hack.pdf), which seems to tell a different story. I'm having a hard time believing this is an innocent "oh everyone had full read write permissions on the entire document tree" story. I'm leading towards something more along the lines of Mr. West finding and cracking a password file on his competitors machine, and using that to gain admin priv.'s, then trying to convince customers to change based on "security holes" in their current service.

  6. Re:Wonder if I could be prosecuted by Syberghost · · Score: 2, Troll

    Two months ago, my caller ID reported a call from a number. I was bored, so I checked it out and it looked like a home number. On a hunch, I looked him up in the cross-reference directory and went to his house.

    He'd left his door unlocked, and I was looking at his living room. I thought about leaving a note on his TV telling him he left his door unlocked and his house was open to the world.

    Thank God I wised up...He could have had me prosecuted!!!! God I'm so starting to hate the government.