EFF stood up for the hacker who found the vulnerability on the AT & T site and got behind the bars
This Monday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) appealed to the US Federal Court of Appeal regarding the chosen measure of punishment of Andrew Auernheimer, known in the IT environment as “Weev” (Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer), who is in prison for 41 months Computer Fraud (Computer Fraud & Abuse Act (CFAA)).
In 2010, Daniel Spitler (Daniel Spitler), doing the same thing as Weev, discovered an error in the configuration of AT & T servers, thanks to which iPad owners' email addresses were publicly available on the Internet. Spitler, using a script, collected about 114,000 user emails, and Auernheimer distributed the collected address database among a number of organizations as evidence of an existing vulnerability, while informing AT & T itself.
Since both specialists did not even think of hiding, the federal prosecutor could easily blame both Auernheimer and Spitler for stealing personal data and conspiring to violate the CFAA law. Spitler made a deal with the investigation last June and thus was able to avoid imprisonment, while his colleague, unsuccessfully fighting for his rights, received 41 months in prison starting in March of this year. He is now in the White Deer Federal Correctional Facility in Pennsylvania.
EFF's lawyer Hanni Fahauri (Hanni Fakhoury) believes that the government has decided to arrange a demonstration process from Auernheimer's case. He notices:
On similar charges - in violation of the CFAA law (for downloading millions of documents from the JSTOR online library with the alleged purpose of placing them in free access) - well-known Internet activist Aaron Schwartz was threatened, who was threatened with 30 years of imprisonment with huge fines. January 11 of this year, he committed suicide.
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In 2010, Daniel Spitler (Daniel Spitler), doing the same thing as Weev, discovered an error in the configuration of AT & T servers, thanks to which iPad owners' email addresses were publicly available on the Internet. Spitler, using a script, collected about 114,000 user emails, and Auernheimer distributed the collected address database among a number of organizations as evidence of an existing vulnerability, while informing AT & T itself.
Since both specialists did not even think of hiding, the federal prosecutor could easily blame both Auernheimer and Spitler for stealing personal data and conspiring to violate the CFAA law. Spitler made a deal with the investigation last June and thus was able to avoid imprisonment, while his colleague, unsuccessfully fighting for his rights, received 41 months in prison starting in March of this year. He is now in the White Deer Federal Correctional Facility in Pennsylvania.
EFF's lawyer Hanni Fahauri (Hanni Fakhoury) believes that the government has decided to arrange a demonstration process from Auernheimer's case. He notices:
If you have discovered a vulnerability, sounded the alarm and notified the security community about it, you can go to jail.
On similar charges - in violation of the CFAA law (for downloading millions of documents from the JSTOR online library with the alleged purpose of placing them in free access) - well-known Internet activist Aaron Schwartz was threatened, who was threatened with 30 years of imprisonment with huge fines. January 11 of this year, he committed suicide.
')
[ Source ]
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/185446/
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