{"id":664,"date":"2008-03-09T10:44:33","date_gmt":"2008-03-09T15:44:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scaredpoet.com\/wordpress\/?p=664"},"modified":"2008-03-26T23:15:34","modified_gmt":"2008-03-27T04:15:34","slug":"howards-mad-hax0ring-skillz-almost-get-his-site-canned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/?p=664","title":{"rendered":"Howard’s mad-hax0ring skillz almost get his site canned"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MobiTV\"<\/p>\n

Better be careful, fellow bloggers and website proprietors. According to mobile television provider mobiTV<\/a>, if one of your users happens to post incredibly easy methods to get free content from them, you<\/strong> could be labeled a 1337 H4x0R and your site potentially taken down by their crack legal team. At least that’s what the owner of HowardForums<\/a>, the premier geek site for wireless phone enthusiasts, has learned. HowardForums has been the go-to-site for years now if you want to, say, hack or unlock your iPhone<\/a>, or aren’t happy with the restrictive interface on your Verizon-branded Motorola phone and want to remove it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But recently, one site member turned his sights on mobiTV’s awesome, incircumventable DRM and authentication security, and were shocked… utterly shocked! When he managed to penetrate it.<\/p>\n

What, pray tell, does their awesome DRM and site security consist of? A simple plaintext file, with the extension renamed, that’s what. A Howardforums member posted details on how to download and crack the encryption of this plaintext file<\/a> (read: open it up on the same web browser you’re viewing this site with). Soon after the shit hit the fan, MobiTV’s legal department tried to put the smackdown<\/a> on site owner Howard Chui, alleging among other things, that:
\n<\/p>\n

The url “{redacted}” is not publicly available, nor is it posted anywhere on our website for viewers to access. The only way to access the links is through this url, and the only way to obtain this url is through hacking\/debugging<\/em>. <\/p>\n

“Anyone with a computer can view the file” – Actually, only people who have access to this url that was obtained in violation of our IP rights (hacking is a violation) can view it. <\/p>\n

We are going to contact ICANN as well as your host to resolve this matter if you refuse to remove these threads. Please confirm by the end of business today (Pacific time) that you have complied. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Apparently, the legal suits at mobiTV think that the use of a modern phone browser is “hacking\/debugging.” Or specifically, asking the phone browser to show you the URL<\/a> of the site you’re visiting is “hacking\/debugging.” That’s right. Your web browser’s address bar<\/a>, or the “show URL” softkey on your common 99-cent RAZR is now Scene++ in the hax0ring community, folks, a cyber-crime evil that must be stopped!<\/p>\n

Fortunately for Howard, the rantings of mobiTV’s lawyer-douche produced an outpouring of support<\/a> from his user-base and web users at-large<\/a>. After the calls and e-mails poured in, mobiTV’s president came forward and made nice with Howard<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Again, we’re big fans of the sight and our intention was never to bring your entire sight down or to “censor the Internet” like we’re being accused. The irony is that is quite the opposite type of company we are and as one of the leaders in new media, we couldn’t be more supportive of the rights of sights like yours. Please know that our first priority is always to fix any security issues with our system and we’re doing that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Moral of the story: be careful what urls you let your users post on your “sight.” Or else a band of lawyers may try to take your “sight” down for being a hacker haven.<\/p>\n

Moral #2: Free TV is bad, mmmkay?<\/p>\n

Moral #3: Literacy is evidently not a pre-requisite for being a company president.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Better be careful, fellow bloggers and website proprietors. According to mobile television provider mobiTV, if one of your users happens to post incredibly easy methods to get free content from them, you could be labeled a 1337 H4x0R and your site potentially taken down by their crack legal team. At least that’s what the owner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gadgets-widgits-and-whatzits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}