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"It's better me break in and make the fact I did public, than someone break in silently and wipe the box, losing hundreds of hours of both the team's and clients' time."

It's better yet to break in and discreetly notify the folks involved. Show a screenshot at Twitter.com that you COULD have tweeted. Voila-- you've done something positive.

Going public is an immature ego play that doesn't consider the feelings of lots of folks. Even if you want the the ego boost, post a "How I saved PHPfog" post-mortem when the issue is resolved.

Shame on you.

Hi Elliot,

I appreciate that you discovered a security flaw and took action to get it fixed. Thank you.

However, the WAY you did this really screwed up a bunch of people. I have an app running on PHP Fog that serves 25,000 people a day, and I woke up on Sunday morning to a stream of complaints that it had been down for hours. You seem technically capable, so I'm sure you have a lot of interesting (and useful) projects and hacks to come. But next time you do something like this, model it after this:

http://daverecycles.com/post/2858880862/heroku-hacked-dissec...

If you're hacking to help people and make the world a better place, do it like David Chen. With your abilities you will get a lot of respect and appreciation if you do it like that. If you act destructively, some people might appreciate your technical chops but you won't get real respect in the field.

And don't worry too much if it feels like you're at the center of a cyclone right now. It'll pass, and as long as you act more deliberately in the future you'll be okay. :)

- Jason

Unfortunately, that cyclone may not be as easy to get past. Yes, people won't forever care about phpfog. However, if phpFog (which was at least PARTIALLY at fault here) presses charges, thats a criminal record and will come up on every background check for the rest of his life. This effects job opportunities, VISA opportunities, loans (not to mention lawyer debt from fighting it), hell even insurance prices.

What the kids did was bad, but I think pressing charges and seriously hindering two smart sixteen year-olds is a knee-jerk, over-zealous application of law and retaliation/punishment. Especially (I know I'm going to draw a lot of heat for this) when they found THEIR irresponsible storage of sensitive data.

I am a dev. I have also worked in the computer security field for a reputable firm. What phpfog did was irresponsible(actually, stupid!) and it was relatively easily avoidable. I know this because I (along with pretty much every dev) have used the exact stopgaps and quick-fixes that phpFog did. BUT (big lesson) cleaning up after your self is as much a part of programming as putting those quick-fixes in place. Unfortunately, its not the "fun" part and its not the most obvious money maker.

Like they (pretty much) said, phpFog put off the fixes because they wanted to deliver quickly. Thats THEIR decision and THEIR risk/reward assessment. I've made the same assessments in my work. They should suck it up and learn the lesson. Not hurt little kids. They're lucky it was found by these kids and not someone that knows how to conceal their identities and/or wants to do more serious damage (For example, hurting a phpFog clients).

If I knew some dev at my hosting company was keeping system passwords on a web server, they wouldn't be my hosting company. What about the trust/confidence of the clients that phpFog was knowingly betraying?

Edit: Yes, there is a proper way to disclose information. They're kids. I'm surprised they handled it as well as they did to be honest. I was a much dumber 16 year old.

I see:

"I was proving that the system was horribly exploitable."

but I read:

"I was exploiting a horribly exploitable system that, had I notified the admins, almost certainly would have been dealt with fast by some guys who obviously care about their service. If it wasn't, I could have still released it publicly a few days later like every other pen tester anywhere. Instead I went for the lulz. Now I'm backpedaling by justifying bad behavior with worse behavior, editing posts, and blaming people who I told, instead of just admitting I handled it really, really badly."

Personally, I didn't know PHPFog beyond the name, but your jackass move makes me want to actively support them.

And don't kid yourself - nothing you did after finding the vulnerability was in the best interest of PHPFog's users. This isn't pen testing or stumbling across a vulnerability. Telling someone else who released stolen code makes it quite black hat.

It seems to be from one of your friends:

phpfogsucks.com is hosted with tomato.compwhizii.net:

http://sharingmyip.com/?site=phpfogsucks.com

Which is owned by John Du Hart ( http://johnduhart.me/ ) .

You guys could be in a lot of legal trouble if they decide to press charges.

The worst thing is, this guy (compwhizii) is sort of important online, he is the system administrator for facepunch.com, a very large forum. I guess he'll be losing that job.

I would consider, " I also gained access to the phpFog Twitter account and posted a bit." to be a dick move.

Would you rather that I hadn't, and instead just wiped the box?

How about I changed every DNS record for every domain to something like goatse.cx?

In perspective, it's not a dick move at all. I'm not academically subnormal, I wouldn't do stupid things with a public Twitter account excluding make it noted that it's temporarily under someone else's control. What's more, I willingly relinquished control of it back to Lucas about an hour later.

That's a false dichotomy. You didn't have to post on their Twitter account, just like you didn't have to wipe a box or alter DNS. I hope if you learn one thing from this, it's how real responsible disclosure works.

I didn't have to at all, correct. But like you said, one doesn't have to wipe the box or redirect everything to goatse, however if you give many people the ability, there will be 10% who will do it. In perspective, me posting on the Twitter account (which was easily remedied, and like I said control was willingly relinquished) wasn't much of a bad thing.

On a relative scale? Yes, wiping the system is much worse.

On an absolute scale? They're both still bad: the lesser of two evils is still an evil. ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

I never claimed what I did was a good thing.

Well, in your original post you said: "I don't consider what I did to be a bad thing."

So if you don't consider your actions to be bad or good, that means you think they're neutral? ;-)

No.

I 'think' what I did was a relatively good thing. I never claimed it was, nor would I use that sort of thing as a defence. Everything that I have a say in is under control of phpFog now, and no data was lost. Anything further is completely out of my hands, I can only do so much.

I think we're in danger here of arguing in circles, but let me just say that I think the mindset of "I could've done so much worse, but I showed restraint, therefore It's (relatively) okay" is very troubling to hear (and I know it's not just you that thinks this way). If you broke into a home, and only broke a few lamps and changed the locks on the doors, and then tell the homeowner "no hard feelings, I mean I could've burnt the place to the ground", you sound like a mad-man -- but because this is virtual, the impacts of your actions aren't so immediate or easy to feel, but they're still there (downtime leads to loss of consumer confidence, leads to loss of sales, leads to loss of jobs and livelihoods, and on and on). However, it doesn't mean there aren't real, financial, consequences to the actions.

I realize everyone makes mistakes, especially as teens, but I just wanted to voice my opinion that this mindset people seem to have where because they didn't {burn the server to the ground}, they shouldn't feel bad is both naive and dangerous, and if I were you, I'd do my best to drop it, learn your lesson, and move on. Best of luck.

Would you rather that I hadn't, and instead just wiped the box?

We would prefer if you had done neither.

This is a false dichotomy. You know it is. Feigned ignorance is the lowest form of intellectual dishonesty.

> You know it is

Don't forget that he is a 16 year old brat.

It's not like your two options were either wipe the box or take over their twitter account.

A responsible pen-tester would have reported the issue privately and disclosed it publicly at a later date.

Take a look here for a protocol to follow in future http://www.wiretrip.net/rfp/policy.html

Interesting. Link bookmarked for when it's not midnight, I'll definitely take a read through that. It'd be nice to have a guideline of sorts, I guess.

One thing you should probably watch out for in all this is that you've used your real name and your website is personally identifiable. Depending on the Laws in your jurisdiction, what you've done (getting root on the phpfog server and accessing their twitter account) could be a criminal offence.

Indeed a quick look at Queenslands Cybercrime laws shows up

"The Queensland law introduced in 1997 uses the heading 'computer hacking and misuse' but the offence is defined as the use of a restricted computer without the consent of the computer's controller. A restricted computer is defined as one that requires a 'device, code or sequence of electronic impulses' to gain access. There is a penalty scale of two, five or 10 years maximum term of imprisonment depending on whether (1) an offender simply uses a computer, (2) causes detriment or damage, or gains or intends to gain a benefit, or (3) the detriment, damage or gain is valued at more than $5,000."

I think the takeaway that you should have from this is; the person you showed this exploit to is not trustworthy, I'd avoid associating with them in the future.

Dude, are you aware that this is a federal crime in the US? They have extradition treaties with AUS. You need to get your parents to get you a lawyer - FAST

So, just to clear something up: those links to PHPFog code are dumps that you leaked to a third party, who then posted up this website?

The website was allegedly posted before I obtained the engine code, however it then went on the site after I gave a copy of the engine code to someone in order to analyze and look for further exploits.

To clarify, I had no intention of hosting the files for public access and never did so. Any links to my site were immediately dead as they were only used so that a copy of the source could be obtained to analyze. The files were destroyed from the server after.

Aha. That's an unfortunate situation for you. Ultimately though, it seems like you dropped the ball by leaking the code to someone else: even if you weren't responsible directly for the site or for posting the code publicly, you were the one who made it possible. Hopefully you can learn from this experience.

---

Edit: You said "To clarify, I had no intention of hosting the files for public access and never did so. Any links to my site were immediately dead as they were only used so that a copy of the source could be obtained to analyze. The files were destroyed from the server after."

If that's the case, then mind explaining this?

https://twitter.com/#!/communistcake/status/4934029867707596...

Yes, I can explain that.

The links are dead. They were the links to the original uploads for the others to look at. The link was leaked to Andrew somehow. By looking at times, I'm very sure that the files were deleted from there before they were posted by Andrew.

I don't know and don't want to find out how he obtained those links. We're all a big group of people, but the links were never shared by me to him. He's a rash and irresponsible person as you can tell from that tweet.

Yeah, except you posted the links on facepunch, in this post: http://www.facepunch.com/threads/1070158-phpfog-it-s-like-he... before you edited and removed it.

By your own admission you:

1) Hacked PHPFog.

2) Stole their source code and distributed it to others.

3) Unlawfully accessed and defaced their Twitter account.

Yes, you're clever, but your behavior is "rash and irresponsible." If I were you, I'd be on the phone with Lucas apologizing and getting ready for some community service.

Get a lawyer dude - FAST