Hacking or File Sharing?

[d_barszczak]

Whats your opinion?

 

If your bored and decide to scan for open smb ports on your isp. This then results in you finding out that some moron has shared his My Documents to the internet with all his business information and finance info with NO PASSWORD required to access the share.

 

Are you hacking or are you accessing a share that is available to the public?

[Daniel0]

That depends on how the law of the country in question is formulated.

[947740]

That depends on how the law of the country in question is formulated.

 

From a moral standpoint, I would say it is hacking no matter what the law is.  You are still seeing possibly sensitive information that you could use against that company.

[d_barszczak]

From a moral standpoint you would know that the files are sensitive and you should not really be sniffing for open ports. But if law came knocking at your door what do you think the outcome would be.

 

This stems from a video a watched on you tube where a large amount of people set there My Docs as their lime wire share directory. Some clever sod then typed in company account and did a document search. This also returned some interesting results.

 

Is the above example carless file sharing or hacking?

[947740]

Both.  The people that put their documents out there were carelessly sharing their files, while the "clever sod" was hacking.

[br0ken]

Is it burgling if someone leaves their unlocked (or wide open in some cases) and someone enters their house and looks at/takes their stuff?

 

Yes, in my opinion this constitutes as burgling. However, the owner of the house could easily have avoided this if he took the simple step of closing and locking his door.

 

While this type of hacking is wrong I think it's about time people start taking responsibility for their bad security practises.

[corbin]

Hrmmm anyone happen to know of the top of their head if it's illegal to port scan in the US?  I know it is in a few other countries....

[keeB]

It isn't.