On: Newspaper to close its doors over hacking scandal.

[speckledjim]

> The difficulty of an attack has nothing whatsoever to do with the severity of the resulting offense.

My point which you gloss over is in the definition of "attack".

Whether browsing to a publicly accessible url with no security is an attack or not, is a very grey area.

[tptacek → speckledjim]

No, it's not a grey area. The "public accessibility" of a URL may serve as evidence that you had no criminal intent (because you didn't have to "jimmy the lock" to get in), but if you then do things with that access, you're criminally liable.