In one of the even more absurd cases: According to an AP report (cited in Slashdot), Intentia International has filed criminal charges against Reuters PLC, alleging that the news service illegally obtained an earnings report that the company had not yet released, by guessing the URL at which it had been posted on Intentia’s public web site. Intentia claims that the report was “not available through normal channels,” according to AP. (Also see Financial Times and CNET News.com reports.) DES
Is it 2002, or the early days of the internet?
Sorry, it was in 2002 which I think is the early days of internet being popular.
Nah, the 90s were the early days of the internet being popular, with AOL launching their internet service in 1991 and even The Today Show talking about the internet in 1994. While 2002-internet isn’t the same as today’s internet, it was far from the early days by that point.
I was once accused of hacking at a former job. I used File Explorer to log into a remote system and look at files of a program we were troubleshooting, while they were logged into the desktop remotely. In those days, Windows only allowed 1 connection (plus console, but that’s another story), so when I started describing the file structure, they got all quiet. Then they asked how I could see that, which I explained I just used File Explorer. They didn’t know how I could use Explorer (they didn’t know the difference between File and Internet Explorer) to access the server, so obviously I must be hacking. I explained how I was just looking at the files, and if that’s really relevent as the software was currently broken and we were trying to fix it for them. They insisted that I stop hacking their servers. So I had to spend the rest of the session asking them to describe the file structure over the phone so I could troubleshoot their software.
You’d think this was at some podunk little company…but no, this was a multi-billion dollar oil company in Texas. Never overestimate the abilities of someone just because they work for a large company.
I was accused some years ago (like… 2012?) of “hacking” an alpha of an online game because I changed some urls to get items or move them between players… I actually documented all of this and sent them plenty of bug reports. It was an alpha, after all and we were specifically asked to report bugs.
They then literally sent me an email and told them that they can see my provider from my IP and will contact them to sue me for hacking…The game never left their alpha state and soon after closed down completely over some drama where a mod got access to important keys and locked everyone out.
Fun fact: the programmer of that pile of shit then announced that they started working for a huge online game company.
