Zoombombing is a crime, not a prank, prosecutors warn

So you wish that the digital world, a place where the majority of the youth are spending an ever-increasing amount of their time, to be subject to a culture we wouldn't tolerate in the physical world? Perhaps first define an internally consistent worldview. The reality is the internet isn't this blank space for hackers experimentation and exploitation anymore (used to be one of those kids by the way). It's becoming more and more integral to people's lives. It can cause real harm to people. It can even cause the loss of life. These things need to be taken seriously much more so than our childish notions of some anarchistic society of hackers and trolls doing as they please. Save that for the playgrounds and the skateparks. The real world works differently.

There's a term for this. "Victim Blaming".

Its also the same kind of excuses heard when a woman was dressing well and gets raped. Then the refrain is "she was asking for it", or "she deserved it with the way she dressed".

Notice that if a front door is unlocked and someone goes inside, its still trespassing. Just because its easier to commit a crime doesnt make the thing not a crime.

(Please note, that I'm making this argument in good faith. I'm sure many here have digitally trespassed on others' computer systems without permission. It's not "trolling"; its a straight-up violation of the CFAA.)

If someone’s house is robbed because their front door was left unlocked you might admonish them for poor security practices, but no one really debates that the robber was in the wrong and committed a crime.

I wouldn't go so far as to say "the real crime," but I wholeheartedly agree that zoom should share some responsibility here. If we're going to routinely put children in a virtual space, that virtual space should be able to be secured for them. If an after-school children's program put children in a position where, say, sexual predators easily had access to them, we'd not only blame the sexual predators, but also the system that put the kids within reach to them.

I've always been very surprised zoom has an easily-guessable meeting ID namespace. It's a user experience tradeoff, but in my opinion, either the meeting IDs should be sparse and hard to guess, or there should be passwords (or possibly both).

> people who open themself to exploits carry the majority of blame

So a homeowner or car owner that leaves their door opens should be responsible for burglaries? Someone that wears a nice watch that leads to a mugging?

How about people that commit crimes take responsibility for them?

Since some people are entirely mistaking my point, here some more in-depth thoughts.

We should hold the companies and individuals operating on the internet to the highest standard to prevent such security violations. I am talking about a balance of the barrier here. Guessing meeting IDs is such an obvious and trivial attack vector that it should be expected to be abused.

We look at companies like Facebook and expect them to keep our data safe and if they don't, we hold them accountable even though they are a victim of a crime. Some comment equated that to victim blaming in case of rape and that is just an insane analogy.

Obviously if there is a real world consequence and people having damage they should have the right to get compensated and that is why we expect providers and companies to keep logs, but honestly how do we expect services to develop the highest standard if they can pass the blame to an attacker. At least an equal part if not the majority should be the organization that engineered a vulnerability because in most cases these happen due to improper design. (See programming vs. civil engineering quality discussion)

We are talking about a minor inconvinience through trolling easily fixed by a proper token system on Zoom's end. This is not what the criminal justice system should be prosecuting some teenagers for.

It's all about intent, not about how you did something or what.

>you just join a meeting that someone posted openly on reddit, inviting others to troll?

If you joined the meeting with the full knowledge and intention of trolling yes, that falls under statute. What that other person did doesn't really matter in your prosecution, he might be prosecuted as an accessory to your crime, but his actions don't provide you enough defensive cover.

What you're stating is like a gun murderer saying "I only pulled a lever, which billions of people do every day".

If someone posted a deep URL to a hospital oxygen system inviting reddit to troll, and you go there with the knowledge and intention to troll, and press the off switch and kill a bunch of people, you're going to be prosecuted for their deaths. "I just clicked a button lol" isn't a good defense and will probably just make the judge and jury think even worse of you. Same with typing /../, you're trying to access hidden and potentially protected sensitive information. It's like trying the handles of the cars parked on the road.

I got a felony (which was later dropped) pressed against me for something like this. Changed my highschool's website to a rickroll, ended up in cuffs.

I'm curious what distinguishes those kids who can vs. can't resist that urge.

I don't mean that judgmentally. I'm just curious if/how various factors (pyschology; impulse control; family environment; etc.) come into play.

growing up in the 70/80ies making prank calls to random people was one of our most fun things to kill boredom.

my fav one was we called some rando and ask for "Frank". The obvious answer was "There is no Frank". You repeat this a couple of times until they get really annoyed, then wait a few hours and have the second person makes the call and say "This is Frank, has anyone called for me?"

Another one was us calling a classmates parents home who we didn't like and who liked to bully us. Convince the parents that the son filled out a form for a raffle at our mall and he won and the parents should come to shop XYZ to pick up the price. Knowing personal info helped with the social engineering ofc.

All this today would create a sh1tstorm but it was business as usual back then. Nobody cared and some people/victims actually saw the humor and even laughed.

Isn't it more like a private meeting, say, in your house that has a door that's unlocked?

I personally dislike applying digital settings to real-world, but if you're going to make a comparison these aren't for the public or on public property.

They only need a couple dozen well-publicized arrests and prosecutions to deter 99% of the trend.