Slashdot Mirror
US Wants UK Hacker To Pay To Fix Holes He Exposed
bossanovalithium writes "Gary McKinnon, whose tribulations we have followed for several years now, is the UK hacker trying to escape extradition to the US. It appears he is expected to foot the bill for the US Government patching holes his breaching uncovered — to the tune of $700,000. It's not really the norm for someone to pay for exploits to be patched — damages fixed, yes, but this is a very different thing." The article paraphrases Eugene Spafford as saying that the victim of a cybercrime should not take the blame. "If someone broke a door to rob a store, he said, it was usual to charge them the cost of the door." Isn't the McKinnon case more like charging him to buy the lock that had been missing when he walked in?
If I find a hole in my Government's IT security, I'll keep my mouth shut and let the government hear about it from the Chinese or the Iranians or the S. Koreans or ...anyone but me because they'll send me to jail and make me pay.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
I wouldn't report any kind of crime or safety hazard if this becomes a regular tactic.
This is exactly like charging for a lock that was never there. Another analogy -- it is like forcing the thief to pay for the security system that the store owner now feels that he has to buy to prevent future actions.
If he damaged a system by hacking in, that's one thing. He should pay for that. But it's hardly his fault that the holes were there in the first place and he shouldn't be held responsible for funding the software improvements to prevent such actions in the future.
The holes aren't his "damage". The holes were already there. I don't care if a whole wall was missing, if an individual walks into a building and does damage or steals, the damage or stealing is what they are responsible for. Building the wall or replacing the lock is not their responsibility at all.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Repaying any damage he would have caused: Expected.
Going to Jail for his actions: Expected.
Paying 700,000 Dollars to fix the hole he DISCOVERED (not created): Unlawful.
This seems like quite the case of people, oblivious of technology, deciding over a technological matter. His crimes might be illegal entering, but he didn't have to break any doors windows or locks. They were all wide open. If someone ever breaks into my house and gets caught I should sue em and get em to pay money to turn my home into an impenetrable doom fortress.
Isn't the McKinnon case more like charging him to buy the lock that had been missing when he walked in?
Rather like the lock company demanding he reimburse them the cost of redesigning their badly designed locks?
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
It's paying for the research, development, and possibly deployment of a new and improved lock.
Analogies should be correct to be effective. Sadly, the most effective ones are often incorrect.
I like the lock analogy, but I think it would be more appropriate to say that they are charging him for discovering that the bolts that hold the locked door shut were missing. He simply pointed it out...
No, it is not simply like charging him to buy the lock that had been missing. If you entered someone's home uninvited and deliberately or accidentally caused substantial cost and damage to the homeowner, you should be liable for your actions.
I know, right?
Like last week, these kids walked uninvited across my lawn, and caused substantial damage to a number of blades of grass! And then to add insult to injury, their damned irresponsible parents just couldn't grasp their liability to pony up for the slab, four walls, roof, and two garage doors to "repair" the space their crotch-fruit just casually trespassed across!
Sure, some scofflaws would point out that I didn't have a whole garage there to start with, so why should they have to pay for the rest? But hey, I had the good solid dirt underneath a future-garage, at least.
These are legal matters we are talking about here.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
The real crime is exposing sensitive data through the internet. If a hacker shows his concern and makes it clear that the government is exposing sensitive data, the criminal is the government, not the hacker.
The funny thing is that the real crimes are often not legally the real crimes. In the Netherlands, it is not a crime to have a system full of sensitive data that is hardly secured. But it IS a crime for anyone to expose this insecurity. The Dutch government has created a special "theft of processor time" law to ensure this.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
"Isn't the McKinnon case more like charging him to buy the lock that had been missing when he walked in?"
More like they want him to pay for a lock that wasn't there because he was the first one to tell them that the lock wasn't there.
Or even more obvious, somebody forgot to put in a front door and now the store wants him to pay for a new door because he was the first one to tell the store that they had no door.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
However what is at issue here is what if you walk up to your neighbor and say "Hey don't you think maybe you should have a door on that house? Someone could get in you know..." He then sends you the bill for the door, lock, security bars, and exterior gate.
D.
The original poster tossed South Korea (which Washington considers to be one of its strongest military allies) with Iran ( which Washington considers part of the so-called "Axis of Evil") and China (which Washington considers one of its strongest rivals), it is unlikely that he knows the difference.
I think he was just trying to be punny. If someone is dumb enough to not know the difference between North and South Korea, I doubt they'll know where Seoul is, or even that it exists.
Isn't the McKinnon case more like charging him to buy the lock that had been missing when he walked in?
Rather like the lock company demanding he reimburse them the cost of redesigning their badly designed locks?
From what I can find of his "hacking" abilities on the black vault:
Somewhat frustrated by the common avenues of UFO research, Gary began some basic computer hacking techniques from his girlfriend's Aunt's house in the mid-late 1990s. Soon he began using a system of scanning for blank administrator passwords on supposedly secure networks ...
Sounds more like the lock company distributed a working lock to many U.S. government entities and they put the locks on their sensitive possessions but some individuals simply forgot to close the clasp and had no policy for walking around double checking locks. If he did do $700k of damage and bring the system to a halt, he should pay for it. If they are charging him $700k for a script that scans for blank passwords on accounts on their systems and drop it in a chron job, I'll gladly fulfill the work order for half that price!
My work here is dung.
couldn't he fix them himself? With supervision, I mean.
If I tell everyone that some houses have a big fucking gap where a door should be, am I responsible for not installing one?
Similarly, Ralph Nader should pay for the research, development, and deployment of a new and improved Chevrolet Corvair?
You are if you made the owner look like a FOOL!! You're gonna fry.
May the Maths Be with you!
Sure, if a sufficiently arrogant and ignorant attorney brings a case against you.....
Don't underestimate the arrogance of an attorney, or the ability of people to be swayed by theatrics over substance.
It's not about what's fair, it's about what one can get away with.
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
"If someone broke a door to rob a store, he said, it was usual to charge them the cost of the door." Isn't the McKinnon case more like charging him to buy the lock that had been missing when he walked in?
More like being forced to buy a lock when he pointed out that there wasn't one to begin with. Whoever left the holes in the software should have to pay that 700k. If the Ubanti Motor Company* sells a car with defective brakes and the brakes fail and cause an accident, the Ubanti Motor Company will pay the damages, not some mechanic that demonstrated the brakes' fault in a different Ubanti Motors vehicle.
*Fake name to keep fanboys from mismodding
Free Martian Whores!
I don't have a car, you insensitive clod...
A better analogy would be for me to have to replace the emperor's wardrobe
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
From Wikipedia
"The US authorities claim he deleted critical files from operating systems, which shut down the US Army's Military District of Washington network of 2,000 computers for 24 hours, as well as deleting US Navy Weapons logs, rendering a naval base's network of 300 computers inoperable after the September 11th terrorist attacks. They claim the cost of tracking and correcting the problems he caused was $700,000.[15]"
So I don't see where the idea that the claim the $700,000 is merely to secure previously unsecured systems originates from.
If you break into a networkof military computers, it seems reasonable that the owners of the computers would feel that a complete audit of the network to asses damages would be necessary.
So I don't see where the idea that the claim the $700,000 is merely to secure previously unsecured systems originates from.
The imagination of slashdotters, who can never escape that techies-vs-the-rest-of-the-world mentality.
Except there was no password, no security breach, no rooting, and no subsequent vandalism. There was no security whatsoever: he just walked right in. He didn't break anything, he didn't delete anything, he only looked. This is the virtual equivalent of trespassing, not breaking and entering. Furthermore, he only got caught because he left a note.
That's the problem. Crazy people leave notes; stupid people who don't know any better leave notes; honest people who don't believe they're doing anything wrong leave notes. Criminal masterminds, however, do not leave fucking notes. From the plain facts of the case, it's obvious that Gary McKinnon is crazy, stupid, and pitiably honest, but not a criminal. He apparently didn't even realize he was breaking the law, as evidenced by the fact that he intentionally identified himself. Unfortunately, this hasn't stopped prosecutors in both the US and UK from slandering him and trying to utterly ruin his life.
At this point, the US and UK governments have probably spent vastly more money prosecuting McKinnon than McKinnon ever possibly could have caused in damages, and they have done so for the most asinine reasons. It's not even as though successfully prosecuting him will set any kind of useful example: McKinnon was either too stupid or too crazy to understand that he was breaking the law, so it's not like legal precedent would have affected his actions. The next time some dipshit decides the US government is hiding UFO secrets on publicly available computers, it's not as though he's going to stop and research the legal issues of accessing those computers first.
What upsets me most about this case, however, is that the prosecutors have revealed themselves to be much stupider, much crazier, and much more dangerous than McKinnon himself. They apparently feel no remorse in expending significant government resources hounding some stupid bastard for no useful purpose. They're a bunch of Goddamn sociopaths.
Or more to the point....
Its like he noticed your house had ACME InsecureLocks and exploited the ACME InsecureLock to get in. Then told someone "hey, you know his house uses ACME InsecureLocks?"
Your house is no more or less secure than when he started. The only difference is, now people know that you bought locks that were not worth shit. How should that make him liable to buy you "TopBrand SecureLocks"? He didn't buy and install the ACME InsecureLocks, he just pointed out what everyone else could have found out if they just walked up to your front door and looked.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I don't know where your 'here' is, but of course they don't have it in the U.K.: this is why the U.S. must seek extradition; in the event criminals wanted by the U.K. are in the U.S., the U.K. can (and does) seek extradition too: we're countries on friendly terms that are already very cooperative, but even if we weren't, this could still be sought: near-enemies even request extradition from one another, so long as they have some form of diplomatic relations (and even that's not really requisite). Now, perhaps I'm ignorant of some things that I should otherwise know about, but nothing about this seems unusual to this writer. Nothing to see here: no imperialistic stench or jurisdictional trespassing (in this case).
Intelligent idiots are we. | Evil men do not understand justice.
If I tell everyone that some houses have a big fucking gap where a door should be, am I responsible for not installing one?
Better analogy would be, that if you trespassed into someone's house, then got caught, should you be responsible for the amount they paid to have someone come in and check the place out and make sure you didn't damage anything? And the answer is...well, maybe.
You first. I'm not saying it's a good idea. But this is not an innocent person pointing out the security hole, this is someone who themselves used the hole. He's not innocent. Also, if you *break* the lock or even the door on my house, and I need to replace it, I can easily see making you pay for the carpenter to come repair the door and the locks. And I can see making you pay for better locks and doors, to discourage the next idiot from using the same vulnerable-to-attack.
Let's be clear. He didn't walk in a publicly accessible system, he broke into a poorly secured one. That's not an open door, that's a thief committing forced entry.