Teens arrested in alleged MySpace extortion scam

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This "romantic" idea just won't die.

When computers were "new" to the general public, and mysterious, I could understand the susceptibility to believe that anyone who could write a bit of code to "hack" a program must be some kind of genius, but come on people! Writing a program that's completely airtight is nearly impossible, and anyone that managed it would qualify as a genius, but I've yet to see it happen.

Since it's unlikely that any such program exists, and software consists of hundreds of smaller programs, the fact that these two chuckheads found a hole in a piece of software, running on an internet website (another opportunity for holes to form), conferring the title of Genius on them for finding just one or two, is... just damn silly.

Theft is theft. Extortion is extortion. We don't congratulate someone who rapes a young woman in her apartment for using his genius to expose the weakness in her building security system. Hell, even if he just broke in in the middle of the night and stood over her bed and announced to her that he *could* have raped her, but won't, because he just wanted her to see how vulnerable she was, would you applaud that he showed her how to make her apartment a better and safer space?

Or sympathize that his intelligence was being so misused?

The internet might become a better and safer place when we stop making celebrities out of people who do the easiest part of programming - taking it apart - and start giving the credit and appreciation to the people who write the mountains of code that is amazingly secure as so much of it is, because that's what takes the real effort and intelligence.

Oh, yeah, that's boring though, isn't it.

Posted by: TankGirlGrewUp   Posted on: 10/29/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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