Photobucket Hackers Nabbed, Face Serious Charges From US Authorities

The U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement released Friday that two men, Brandon Bourret, and Athanasios Andrianakis, of Colorado Springs, Colorado and Sunnyvale, California, respectively, were arrested for their sale of software designed to breach the security of photo-sharing site Photobucket.com; their "Photofucket" app, says the linked Register report, was used "to plunder Photobucket's users' private and password-protected information, images and videos, it has been alleged ... The charge sheet against Bourret and Andrianakis details one count of conspiracy and one count of computer fraud, aid and abet – both of which carry a maximum prison sentence of five years and a fine of up to $250,000. In addition, the men stand accused of two counts of access device fraud, which carries a higher prison sentence of up to 10 years and a fine of up to a quarter of a million dollars, per count." The indictment, filed in Federal District Court in Colorado, is far easier to read than many.

Comments

Re:Man talk about straight out if Sci FI

[l0ungeb0y]

By that definition, shoplifters should get 20-30 years. You are one fucked up individual if you think these twerps deserve what amounts to a life sentence over grabbing some nudies. Three to Five years? Sure -- but people like you who support these totalitarian policies are the reason why our country is turning into a Fascist Police State. So fuck you very much for helping to burn our freedoms to the ground you fuck.

Re:"Hacking" goes a little far here..

[Sqr(twg)]

So, the question is: Is it illegal to issue HTTP GET requests (that conform to all specifications and obey the robots.txt of the site in question) if the owner of the site didn't intent for the content at that URL to be available to you?

In other words: Is requesting a (non password-protected) webpage equivalent to representing yourself as someone who is authorized to access than page?