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Comment by codechicago277 | Hacker News Reader

I hope you realize what a god complex you had at the time thinking you had the right to harm others just because they were doing the same. This code of ethics is the source of hate in the world. I guarantee these people didn’t learn their lesson but instead started doing the same thing to others even less powerful than themself.

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It depends on your world view. There was also harm prevented, so that might cancel it out. You could also see it as a punishment, though not delivered by the judicial system. Your solution seems to be to do nothing. That can be construed as silent approval. So it really depends on your world view.

This depends on who the DDOS was targeting, otherwise the DDOS was legitimized by this logic (targeting bad people) and this becomes bad again (harming good people to aid bad people).

Of course, that was never considered nor was collateral damage because the ethical justification is just a pretense to excuse harming others.

> I guarantee these people didn’t learn their lesson

Your argument totally falls apart here, because you’re just outright wrong. There are a ton of kids who are curious would-be hackers that turn away from the dark side forever after getting pwned while trying to do something sketchy.

> There are a ton of kids who are curious would-be hackers that turn away from the dark side forever after getting pwned while trying to do something sketchy.

... How do you know?

Feel and vibes. Or anecdote of 1.

"god complex" is very reaching. No one got physically hurt in this scenario. Also unlikely you can "guarantee" this didn't teach anyone any lessons.

> No one got physically hurt in this scenario.

This is not certain.

Zeroing out home, the boot sector, and everything else would cause no harm by the same ethics logic that a DDOS causes not harm. It is just information. This seems like the poster is a hero, because he prevented wrongdoers from causing harm to potentially innocent people. There's not an ethical way to execute a DDOS. It targets someone, and the botnet is compromising and stealing compute from someone.

It taught them a valuable life lesson about trust and humility, and maybe even ethics and the risks of criminal activity in very mild fashion. Recovering from being hacked might stir feelings of empathy for their victims and lead them to learn valuable forensics skills.

Stories like this are part of the personal evolution of a lot of white hats. I think aaza did a real service to the world.

Anarchic dickbaggery is brand 4chan behaviour. You don't go there expecting ethics.

More to the point, I don't understand why you want to spank them for this now. Kids do stupid stuff and this is far less stupid and dangerous than a lot. Indeed a lot of no-effort hackers get burnt on this stuff and stop. I know people who tried and failed. Adding peril to the process scares off a lot of would-be bad behaviour.

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