Adult video-sharing list leaked from law firm | Hacker News Reader

Adult video-sharing list leaked from law firm

bbc.co.uk

30 pointstankenmate14 comments

Wage war on teh intarwebs and teh intarwebs will wage war on you. And it's their home turf.

Wait a minute, how did they get the information from BSkyB in the first place, isn't that supposed to be private. Note to self: create an alias for Netflix.

They got the account details from BSkyB via a lawsuit. The problem is that BSkyB sent the details encrypted, but the problem seems to be that ACS:Law didn't encrypt it when they saved it to disk. Hence break in equals disclosure...

It wasn't a break-in that released the data. They shut down the website in the face of the DDoS. When they brought it back up, their backup copy allowed unfettered access to their server. No exploits were required. They essentially posted all of this information online of their own accord.

I think he was referring to a break in the chain of custody.

Probably used the law enforcement interface. Build a backdoor for cops and the hackers will target it.

The result will be:

A fine, possibly into double figures, for the Data Protection Act Breach

A sympathetic cup of tea from the Law Association for their negligence

No more business for them from anyone except the MPIAA - would you trust them with your business data?

I see a lot of law suits coming from this one. A law firm gathering information on adult oriented downloads looks very close to extortion. It is UK law so I am removed from it, but I would have to assume that this will be a tight situation to wiggle free from for the law firm.

I think he probably shot himself in the foot at the same time:

"In relation to the individual names, these are just the names and addresses of the account owner and we make no claims that they themselves were sharing the files," he added.

"Odd, your entire economic model seems to suggest otherwise."

Yeah, I saw that one and though, wow that one is going to come back to bite you. If they make no claims then what the hell where they doing with the info. I also thought wow you just admitted that you may be holding sensitive and damaging information on innocent people.

The BBC article refers to the people who took down MPAA/RIAA etc with a DDoS script "hackers", interesting.

"Hackers" in the MSM = "Anyone who uses a computer for nefarious purposes".

Funny Story... For a good 20 some years, there was a wonderful conference dedicated to hacking on the Macintosh called 'MacHack' that was traditionally held in Dearborn, Michigan (well, it started on U of M's campus in Ann Arbor, and was on the west coast once) but eventually it found its home just outside of Detroit in a quaint little Holiday Inn. It hosted many a wonderful keynote speaker including Woz himself, and most of the original Macintosh engineering team, amongst others (Ken Arnold, Eric Raymond, David Pogue, Andy Ihnatko, to name a few...)

We'd descend on the place every summer. In the old days, we'd have a massive machine room full of macs provided by sponsors. Biggest LAN some of us yoots had ever seen, and boy did we play some Marathon on it. In later years, we took over the lobby of this place.

The Holiday Inn staff loved us. We were courteous and kept after ourselves well.

Well, they liked us so much and thought we were so upstanding, they extended welcome to other "hacker" conferences that didn't go so well (think FBI making arrests in the lobby, vandalism, general hoodlum-ry). In light of this, they approached us and eventually the conference heads folded and renamed it the ADHOC conference (Advanced Hands-On Developers Conference). There were other circumstances, but the public perception of the concept of "Hacker" is what really did the deed. It died a sad, sad death shortly afterward.

sigh ...a rose by any other name...

RIP, MacHack. sob :)

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