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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

Maybe Saturday afternoon just happened to be when he finished.

And no, it's not like throwing a rock through somebody's window. The information may be used by other people to cause damage, but the mere act of releasing it is not by itself damaging. Let's put blame where it belongs: on the people actually using exploits for bad purposes. If you want to encourage responsible disclosure, don't lead with bad analogies about what happens when you announce a vulnerability to the world, because it just reduces your credibility.

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for the record: i had no idea yesterday was saturday at the time I dropped the code.

Nothing says "hardcore hacker at work" quite like forgetting what day of the week it is.

Nothing says 'irresponsible' like not thinking at all about the impact of releasing information you know people will use for harm. Publishing to github comes after the hacking.

If qwertyoruiop had instead come up with plans for making a suitcase nuke from household ingredients, or for breeding an Ebola analog using a home beer making kit, your argument would imply that you think that posting them on the Internet would not be bad.

I disagree.

And again with the ridiculous analogies.

It's really difficult to have a serious discussion about computer security vulnerabilities when people keep comparing it to throwing rocks through windows or weapons of mass destruction.

And yes, it's relevant, because the severity of a problem can and does influence how problematic various approaches are.

This is a local root exploit. Those are common and not generally problematic. The barrier to escalating from a normal user to root is at best the absolute last line of defense, and often completely irrelevant. It's a problem that should be fixed, don't get me wrong, but the severity is about 2 out of 10.

The fact that I think it's not a bad thing to release information like this has no bearing on what I would think about releasing information on building a suitcase nuke from household ingredients.

Could we try to keep the conversation grounded, here?

If you had been saying before now that this wasn't a severe bug and so we shouldn't be too concerned about disclosure, then you wouldn't have been presented with these strong counterarguments.

But that isn't what you've been saying - rather, you've been making the general argument that releasing information is not damaging or bad, and that we should only hold the people who exploit vulnerabilities responsible - not those who disclose them. Multiple people have argued against you on this.

Now you have switched your position to 'It's not bad to disclose vulnerabilities unless they are severe'. This seems much more reasonable, and came as the consequence of you being presented with what you are calling 'ridiculous' analogies.

To me this seems like a serious discussion done right.

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