Gaining unauthorized access to non public files qualifies as a hack by any and every stretch… a hack does not have to be “sexy”, real life is not Hollywood
In the past governments have gone after people for doing things like view source and stumbling across PII (<a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/this-is-the-hacking-investigation-into-journalist-who-clicked-view-source-on-government-website/" rel="nofollow">https://www.vice.com/en/article/this-is-the-hacking-investig...), or this teen who was arrested for a serious crime for scraping files from the provincial FOIA site by enumerating the ids of files that had been released by the province and placed on the open web with sequential ids (<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/freedom-of-information-request-privacy-breach-teen-speaks-out-1.4621970" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/freedom-of-inform...). In both cases, the government claimed the information was non-public, even though all it took to get it was an un-authenticated request on the open web. These cases are like leaving your tax documents on the curb and then being surprised when your neighbour knows your income.
I'll be very curious to read the post mortem and find out if this rises to the level of actual hacking, or if this is just someone in government finding a scapegoat because they left a bunch of shit that was supposed to be "non-public" on the open web and expected no one to find it.
Either way, Agents have a very different umwelt from humans. They don't 'see' the internet the same way we do. Where we see obstacles, they might not notice anything, and where they run into barriers, we might just click right through.
If you're even a bit hacky yourself, you might not see the internet the same way yourself either. Consider little tricks like looking at urls and trying others that fit the pattern; or hitting view source in order to download a pesky image... etc etc.
dazzatron · · focus · HN ↗
looksjjhg · · focus · HN ↗
dghlsakjg · · focus · HN ↗
In the past governments have gone after people for doing things like view source and stumbling across PII (<a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/this-is-the-hacking-investigation-into-journalist-who-clicked-view-source-on-government-website/" rel="nofollow">https://www.vice.com/en/article/this-is-the-hacking-investig...), or this teen who was arrested for a serious crime for scraping files from the provincial FOIA site by enumerating the ids of files that had been released by the province and placed on the open web with sequential ids (<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/freedom-of-information-request-privacy-breach-teen-speaks-out-1.4621970" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/freedom-of-inform...). In both cases, the government claimed the information was non-public, even though all it took to get it was an un-authenticated request on the open web. These cases are like leaving your tax documents on the curb and then being surprised when your neighbour knows your income.
I'll be very curious to read the post mortem and find out if this rises to the level of actual hacking, or if this is just someone in government finding a scapegoat because they left a bunch of shit that was supposed to be "non-public" on the open web and expected no one to find it.
Kim_Bruning · · focus · HN ↗
If you're even a bit hacky yourself, you might not see the internet the same way yourself either. Consider little tricks like looking at urls and trying others that fit the pattern; or hitting view source in order to download a pesky image... etc etc.
retrac · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/teen-accused-foi-website-resonates-programmers-1.4623757" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/teen-accused-foi-...
<a href="https://www.theregister.com/security/2018/05/07/hacking-charge-dropped-against-nova-scotia-teen-who-slurped-public-records-from-the-web/1233050" rel="nofollow">https://www.theregister.com/security/2018/05/07/hacking-char...
<a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7590375/ns-foipop-website-back-online/" rel="nofollow">https://globalnews.ca/news/7590375/ns-foipop-website-back-on...