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Comment by beaconstudios | Hacker News Reader

trying to sell dual-use RAT software on hack forums and calling it legitimate business seems like riding the line. As the article says, you're not going to find corporate IT managers on that site. Seems like the guy was knowingly selling to hackers and then crying foul when he "discovered" they were using it for hacking and disabling the license.

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Not hard to imagine that a kid on a hacker forum grows up & gets a tech job. Today's hack forum user is tomorrow's corporate IT professional.

yeah, but once you're a corporate IT professional you don't go back to the blackhat hacking and scamming forum to pick up some software for administering your network. Suggesting that the majority of customers for such software on such a forum are legitimate is a leap.

This isn't directed at you, but at corporate culture and cultures outside of it: Why is "corporate" a legitimizer?

If corporations use it, does that make it okay? why?

A corporation is a legal entity, (a social fiction if you want to be dramatic) for isolation of activities from the individual. That puts it on shaky ground already. History contains myriad examples of bad corporate behavior to corroborate my accusation of shadiness.

To use this history of illegal behavior under the veil of isolation as an argument for legitimizing another activity under questioning is circular.

The preferential treatment for commercial activity over freedom is evidence of citizens-as-products via rigid plutocracy.

This article is seriously clickbait. The authors of legitimate IT security tools aren't advertising on skid websites, just the fact that you advertise on these websites shows that you have the intent of letting people misuse it.

I don't know anything about the particular website he was advertising on, but I could easily see someone in the HN community developing some security software, advertising it via a "Show HN" post, and then being judged for posting it on "Hacker News".

the site described is very much a blackhat hacker forum.

I read the article but it isn't so clear about that. It says the forum contains many non-hacking related subjects. To a total outsider with little understanding of the world of computer security, Hacker News might look and sound like a blackhat site too. There are frequent posts about vulnerabilities, hacking news, and security tools.

Yeah but anyone who actually opens a discussion on hackforums will realize it's a forum made for skids.

as a previous user of the forum in question, I can confirm it's not for the "curious programmer" type of hacker. I realise that the term is ambiguous, but I think that's more due to the "hacker news" type hacker clinging onto an old term after the public understanding of the term has moved onto "hacker = computer criminal". The public at large, and journalists, know what a hacker is - and it's not a VC-driven startup entrepreneur.

Would you argue that phrack magazine is also not for the "curious programmer" - or would you say that the dividing lines are different now than they used to be?

I wonder because I read a lot of stuff in phrack as a "curious programmer"...

Hackforums and phrack are not even close to being in the same category.

Phrack contains a lot of technically interesting articles, which can be of use to anyone interested in IT security.

Hackforums is full of kids giving tips about hacking FB accounts and selling stolen steam accounts...

Yeah. The analogy I'd draw is selling guns is legal. Radical Islamism is legal. A gun store that only advertises on radical Islamist internet fora is at the very least acting recklessly, and thus ought to be held legally responsible for the actions of its customers.

Pick some other niche that most people don't find so reprehensible and your reasoning falls on it's face.

Should a retailer that sells bongs "for use with tobacco" and advertises on a weed forum be held accountable for people illegally smoking weed with it?

A century ago you could have used the same analogy to say that some business that has an advertising deal with a gay bar is responsible for enabling them.

Both those examples are businesses acting "recklessly." Should they be held accountable? That is a slippery slope to biased enforcement.

The difference is that marijuana use and gay sex, if illegal, are "victimless crimes." Hacking into people's computers to take over their webcam and steal their credit cards and passwords is not.

That's no different legally, only ethically. The FBI does not enforce ethics.

Well, gay sex isn't illegal (and has never been illegal at the federal level).

But in any case I'm not offering my legal opinion, I'm offering my ethical one of how I think the law ought to be.

IANAL, so I have no idea whether the government's case in this instance is likely to succeed or whether this application of the relevant statute(s) would withstand a court challenge.

But, if I were America's benevolent-dictator-for-life, I would hold a business and any responsible employees legally responsible for its customers' illegal uses of their product, in the case it is intentionally and recklessly marketed to persons whose interest in the product, any reasonable observer would assume, is likely to be for said illegal use.

And, neither here nor there, but I'd legalize less-harmful drugs (pretty much all except opiates and maybe cocaine/crack), treat addiction as a medical rather than criminal issue, and keep all consensual relations between adults legal.

The reasoning doesn't fall on its face just because you pick an activity that shouldn't be outlawed in the first place.

Interpreting 'should' in the legal sense, then yes holding the bong seller accountable is a valid argument that can be made. And the second scenario is possibly valid too, depending on some details like what they actually sell and what specifically the illegal activity is.

It's not a particularly slippery slope.

I don't really like that kind of enforcement, but it can be done in a reasonable enough manner.

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