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.

Comments

Stealing Passwords?

[still_sick]

Kind of dick move, no?

They proved their point by putting themselves high up in the ranks.

A legitimate Research project should NOT have involved messing with other people's accounts.

If you want to do that, have some person known to the researchers make up an account with the express purpose of their team trying to steal the password.

dupe duke nuker?

[gl4ss]

technically the story it links to is though new, but it's about an old thing.

now.. about these dupes.. just one thing makes me wonder, do the editors have extremely bad memory or don't they follow slashdot at all themselfs? since in most cases a regular reader remembers if he has seen the same story(or one with a lot of resemblance) before. and hell, theoretically they should have more time than 20 secs per a story they pass, so they could have put "chess" into the old stories search.

now, on things that need refreshing or something a 'follow-up' stories could be worth while doing, but not reporting them as totally new.

Ethical ramifications of this.

[mind21_98]

A public institution funding cheating attempts is cause for concern. I assume they got the Internet Chess Club's permission beforehand, but if they didn't they could be in a world of trouble. Just my two cents.

I wonder...

[Oligonicella]

what the U of C's attitude would be toward someone who hacked into their computers to, you know, just experiment and gain knowledge? Maybe up their grades or look at other peoples information?

Just wondering if the shoe fits the other foot.

Re:Forget white hat and black hat...

[general_re]

Don't you have to know how to commit a crime in order to stop folks from commiting crimes?

Exactly why killing a man is part and parcel of becoming a homicide detective. Errr, wait, it's not.

Yes, you have to know how crimes are committed to solve/prevent them, but committing those crimes is not the only way to gain that knowledge.

Re:Slashdot needs dupe detection for editors

[Anonymous Coward]

nah just get rid of timothy

Re:Forget white hat and black hat...

[general_re]

As I said, though, there are plenty of ways to gain that kind of knowledge without actually breaking the law. Forensic accountants learn how to spot money-laundering schemes without having to get out there and launder money. Serial-murder specialists don't have to kill scores of people to learn how serial killers operate. Viral pathologists don't infect people with HIV so they can learn how to prevent AIDS.

In all those cases, they study past cases, study current events, and don't generally have to become like the things they're acting against in order to defeat them, and I have no idea why computer security should be different - as someone who used to work in banking, allow me to testify that we didn't go out and rob banks or kite checks in order to learn how to prevent others from doing the same. And in those few cases where hands-on experience is absolutely necessary, you don't need to go out into the world and involve innocent third-parties - you set up a controlled environment where they can play on the playground without actually attacking real people. The ethics of this sort of "white-hat" hacking are non-existent - this is absolutely unethical behavior on the part of these clowns, and in no way do the ends justify the means.