Hacker News Reader

"There was no hack involved" ... "There was a URL exploit"

I suppose that if your system is vulnerable to a "URL exploit" that's not _technically_ a hack in the strictest sense of the word, but the barn door was still wide open for the possibility of their system being hacked, so I don't see how there is any meaningful difference.

View on HN

There is no meaningful difference to people that understand the difference between the two. Unfortunately to the general public, a "hack/hacker" is scary whereas a "URL exploit" sounds closer to a technical bug. Semantics matter in the world of public perception despite the facts pointing out otherwise.

But, by that logic we're all using hacked systems; as surely we uses systems daily (OS X, Win, Linux) that are full of holes. Right? No.

There's clearly a difference in getting hacked and closing a hole.

Wait, was the 'URL Exploit' the fact that there was a URL at all? Because otherwise, the 'exploit' was that they asked only for information that had recently been stolen.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com