Slashdot Mirror
Following Data Leak, HIV Dating App's Developers Threaten Infection (csoonline.com)
itwbennett writes: Sometime before November 29, the MongoDB housing the data of Hzone, a dating app for HIV-positive singles, was exposed to the Internet. The company, displeased with having the security incident disclosed, responded to an email notification from DataBreaches.net with this threat: "Why do you want to do this? What's your purpose? We are just a business for HIV people. If you want money from us, I believe you will be disappointed. And, I believe your illegal and stupid behavior will be notified by our HIV users and you and your concerns will be revenged by all of us. I suppose you and your family members don't want to get HIV from us? If you do, go ahead." Hzone later apologized for the threat.
Somebody picked the wrong people to fuck with...
Following Data Leak, "Cancer" Dating App's Developers Threaten Infection
Ugh...
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
There's legit whistle blowing, and then there's this... What was the point, to extort and harass ppl. with HIV?
You obviously didn't read their article, their point was to stop the leak. They didn't extort anyone. They just wanted the leak to stop (or at least the web site shut down).
This is a data breach for the sake of a data breach (and boosting the status of a cracker or group's ego - who is "anonymous" anyway, of course, so don't see the point -- ??).
Hackers? You're going a bit far.
This information was getting indexed by at least one commercial search engine. If the information is so easy to access that even a normal search engine has access to it. The web site has done something wrong and the person who found this out is probably not much of a hacker.
But if then, the web site refuses to fix the leak, nor shut down the web site, five days after you've notified them and been in communication with them. Then, there is something seriously wrong with the site. If I had been the person running the site, I would have shut down the web site immediately, period. There is no excuse. If you don't know how to fix it, that's fine, then please just shut down the site. It's better your site is down for a week, than all that data being exposed out there for that same week.
Furthermore since the web site owner is lying about the number of ip addresses having accessed that confidential data, I think they should be sued and shut down permanently by their users (or simply shut down by the authorities). This site provides a valuable service, but if they don't know what they're doing and they're lying when confronted about their mistakes, then someone else should step in and fill that void in the dating marketplace.
Umm...cancer typically isn't the result of incompetence. In act, 65% of the time it's completely by chance, meaning no action you took caused it, you just got unlucky. Leprosy isn't necessarily either, in fact it can spread by somebody coughing into their hand, touching a doorknob, and you coming up later and touching that same doorknob without ever seeing that person.
Furthermore, fulfilling an economic need isn't trading on someone else's misfortune. If it was, then restaurants would be trading on someones misfortune of being hungry.
I would say that the original response to DataBreach was probably shear ignorance.
Shear ignorance ... a truly cutting remark.