Busting People for Pointing Out Security Flaws 350
gsch writes "'In 2004, Bret McDanel was convicted of violating section 1030 when he e-mailed truthful information about a security problem to the customers of his former employer. The prosecution argued that McDanel had accessed the company e-mail server by sending the messages, and that the access was unauthorized within the meaning of the law because the company didn't want this information distributed. They even claimed the integrity of the system was impaired because a lot more people (customers) now knew that the system was insecure.
Notwithstanding the First Amendment's free speech guarantees, the trial judge convicted and sentenced McDanel to 16 months in prison. I represented him on appeal, and argued that reporting on security flaws doesn't impair the integrity of computer systems. In an extremely unusual turn of events, the prosecution did not defend its actions, but voluntarily moved to vacate the conviction.'"
Not to go all Stallman on you, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Look at Linux. An operating system used by millions and every hacker in the world can get their hands on the source code. Why don't we see many viruses for Linux? Because it was implemented well.
I think you mean a GNU/Linux virus. Very little malicious Linux code relies only on kernel exploits to do their bad stuff. Credit where credit is due, and all that. ;^)