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19-Year-Old Archivist Charged For Downloading Freedom-of-Information Releases (www.cbc.ca)
Ichijo writes: According to CBC News, a Canadian teen "has been charged with 'unauthorized use of a computer,' which carries a possible 10-year prison sentence, for downloading approximately 7,000 freedom-of-information releases. The provincial government says about 250 of those contain Nova Scotians' sensitive personal information."
"When he was around eight [...] his Grade 3 class adopted an animal at a shelter, receiving an electronic adoption certificate," reports CBC. "That lead to a discovery on the classroom computer. 'The website had a number at the end, and I was able to change the last digit of the number to a different number and was able to see a certificate for someone else's animal that they adopted,' he said. 'I thought that was interesting.' The teenager's current troubles arose because he used the same trick on Nova Scotia's freedom-of-information portal, downloading about 7,000 freedom-of-information requests." The teen is estimated to have around 30 terabytes of online data on his hard drives, which equates to "millions" of webpages. "He usually copies online forums such as 4chan and Reddit, where posts are either quickly erased or can become difficult to locate."
"When he was around eight [...] his Grade 3 class adopted an animal at a shelter, receiving an electronic adoption certificate," reports CBC. "That lead to a discovery on the classroom computer. 'The website had a number at the end, and I was able to change the last digit of the number to a different number and was able to see a certificate for someone else's animal that they adopted,' he said. 'I thought that was interesting.' The teenager's current troubles arose because he used the same trick on Nova Scotia's freedom-of-information portal, downloading about 7,000 freedom-of-information requests." The teen is estimated to have around 30 terabytes of online data on his hard drives, which equates to "millions" of webpages. "He usually copies online forums such as 4chan and Reddit, where posts are either quickly erased or can become difficult to locate."
...of criminal stupidity.
I'm from Luxembourg and my chamber of representatives used the same 'security system' (people can't possibly guess numbers) and was also breached, obviously, since this 'problem' is known since 1991 or so, when the worldwide web was invented.
Lets be clear, editing the address line is not hacking, not in any way, shape or form. A user name and password request and getting past that is. Editing your address line on your computer and the distant server allowing it, is a fault of that distant server. A request for access was made and it as legally given, the government is screwed and a penalty should be applied for false prosecution. Strictly their fuckup, they made that information publicly accesible without any restriction and they are fucking liars and fraudsters trying to pin their incompetance on someone else. It is not a crime to edit you address bar, it is strictly their fuck up that caused it. No user name, password request and your web site is public facing, that data is free to download, you just gave it away free from all encumbrances. No different to randomly running IP addresses to download what ever you want. No layer of security, no fucking crime, they are cunts blaming someone else for their incompetence and the victim should sue the crap out of them after this is over.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I am trying to understand what he did that was illegal?
He downloaded documents that the government posted on the internet, by simply "guessing" the URL, which incrementally increased from the URL that he was given by the government?
Yup, looks like a case of the government trying to offset blame to me!