

The man who hacked Hollywood - cyphersanctus
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201205/chris-chaney-hacker-nude-photos-scarlett-johansson?printable=true

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olefoo
One thing that strikes me as sad about this is that he very obviously had some
level of talent, drive and ability; and if we as a society had found a way to
channel that productively we would all be better off.

And before you go all "lol, cracking password resets is not technical skill";
think about this for a bit. If you were raised in a context like his (parents
separated early, bad schools, no mentors etc.) would you necessarily have
turned out better?

Who knows; if he'd had a better math teacher in junior high school who'd
gotten him interested in programming early, he might have wound up working at
a startup in Silicon Valley.

~~~
kordless
It all comes down to choice.

~~~
dyeje
Unfortunatly one's options are not always clear.

~~~
forrestthewoods
Most people don't pick the option of stealing massive amounts of personal data
in a manner that is obviously unethical and almost certainly illegal.

Blaming society for his choice sounds like crazy talk to me. What happened to
personal responsibility?

~~~
olefoo
Don't get me wrong, I'm not excusing his moral choices, although I do think
his education in that area was obviously lacking. But the guy was unemployed
for two years and well; boredom plus opportunity for mischief equals trouble.

Would he have been able to do something useful with his life if he'd learned
better coping skills early on?

I can't imagine the sad self-loathing low point you'd have to be at where
reading strangers personal email for fun seems like a good way to spend your
nights and days. But, I can see the forces at work on this guy and it does
make me sad to see someone ruin his life like that.

~~~
forrestthewoods
If he he took half the time he spent on mischief and directed it at learning
an employable skill he would have been successful. White middle-class
Jacksonville isn't exactly the type of rough upbringing necessary to excuse
self inflicted damage in my books.

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rbn
I always wanted to see a marketplace for valuable information. Think of all
the leaks that we hear about and think about all the ones that we don't hear
about.

You would go on it. List your information for sale and then blogs, newspapers
and/or whoever may be interested can purchase it from you.

~~~
coryl
I suppose the issue preventing the existence of such a marketplace is fraud
(bad/misleading information). But many publishers don't seem to have a problem
selling BS anyways right?

~~~
rbn
All marketplaces a fraud issue. You can always solve it via reputation points
and/or proof.

Even in the media they always say "Reliable source". With this marketplace the
"source" can provide information to anyone.

------
corin_
> _"One reporter on television called him 'creepy,' " she continues. "It's not
> right." Hearing this, Chaney looked up from his grilled cheese. The
> paparazzi just caught him on a bad day, he figures. "I hadn't shaved in a
> while," he tells his mom. "I kind of looked like a creep."_

Is it possible that not only his mum, but he himself, doesn't realise that
reading private conversations and looking at private (sometimes nude) photos
belonging to others, without their permission or knowledge, is "creepy"?

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pingou
I'm a bit surprised so many people would put real information as answer to
their secret question, and I'm surprised a lot of websites offer this
alternative to log in without knowing the password, it seems like a big
security hole to me.

~~~
cyphersanctus
Well, I remember once needing to use that function to recover a password I had
forgotten. If i hadn't put real information as an answer to the question, I'm
not sure how I would have been capable of answering it..

~~~
xuki
I make up a single fake answer for every secret question out there and always
use that one.

~~~
cyphersanctus
Hehe do you lose your passwords quite often? Perhaps you could try remembering
Them..

~~~
xuki
No I don't but just in case. The point is to have something secret that only
you know and other people can't google or guess it (dob, first school, etc..)

~~~
cyphersanctus
Ill start doing that. Just in case.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
I like obscure spiritual questions and answers myself.

And now that I've said this on a public forum (a little googling is all it
takes to identify me) I will have to change it to something more obscure...

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cllns
"faces _sixty_ years in prison and $2.25 million in fines."

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Amadou
Stories like this make me think there would be a market for low-volume, high-
security email services. For example, a service that only accepts logins from
pre-authorized devices, where any access pattern out of the ordinary is
immediately vetted by a human with extensive experience. A sort of concierge
email / instant-message / voice-mail service.

Does anyone here point me to such a service?

~~~
cyphersanctus
Indeed, there's definitely a market for such an email service. Then again who
knows how much they'd be willing to pay for it. To have a manned service like
that might be difficult to bootstrap.

~~~
olefoo
It would also be difficult to insure. If you're providing any Service Level
Agreement, or something where you are taking money and selling based on a
quality like security; you are going to fail at some point and get sued as a
result; so your upfront costs and pricing structure have to reflect that.

Gmail can be free because it's a free service and you get what you pay for. To
provide something of an equivalent service level for money with an additional
guarantee of watchdog security services; you'd probably have to start around
$10,000 USD per customer/year. And who's going to pay $10K for an email
account?

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csense
Sixty years? Shouldn't a sentence of that length be reserved for rapists,
murderers and repeat offenders?

------
earroway
Time to recode email password retrieval.

------
GoRevan
"You feel like you've seen something that the rest of the world wanted to
see." Really?

~~~
mkuhn
If you think about how much money is made by selling gossip I think it is a
fair statement.

~~~
cyphersanctus
True, though he probably meant it in a sarcastic way, like "clearly everyone
wanted to see a naked Scarlett."

~~~
jQueryIsAwesome
That is not sarcastic, I bet most Americans would like to see her naked, for
curiosity or/and hormonal predisposition. Maybe the word you were looking for
was "comical".

~~~
cyphersanctus
Haha "hormonal predisposition". Suave.. Heh

~~~
reddit_clone
aka horney bastards!

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decodersignal
Is it possible for a single website to make $50,000 a day with banner ads?
That seems a bit exaggerated.

~~~
corin_
With a CPM of $10 that would only be 5 million banners, so maybe 2-3 million
pageviews - very doable. Even if that CPM shrinks it's doable.

------
zem
anyone else disappointed by what the article turned out to be about? i was
expecting someone who had found ingenious new ways to deal with some
entrenched hollywood practices.

