• AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Most of us older computer nerds and coders certainly tried to hack Facebook back in the 00’s. To answer Grandma’s question, no, we cannot.

    • cbarrick@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Back in undergrad, before Facebook went HTTPS only, I would setup “free wifi” and steal people’s cookies for shits and giggles. Use the cookies to authenticate with FB and send random messages to people.

      Looking back, I probably shouldn’t have been doing that. Definitely illegal.

      • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        They were just barely starting to get serious about legislating cyber security, so you were only maybe breaking some laws. I remember in the 90’s it was a lawless land. There were no laws against hacking, or at least none that anyone understood, and most sites had terrible security. I gained access to someone’s Hotmail once just by trying “anon/anon” as a user/pass combo. I also used to gain access to e-commerce customer databases just by googling certain SQL strings. I’d poke around and then send the webmaster an email letting them know their site was vulnerable.

        • Sprokes@jlai.lu
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          8 months ago

          There isn’t a law against hacking but I am sure there are other applicable laws when you do harm while hacking.

          • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            8 months ago

            There is, it’s called CFAA and is absurdly broad. Pretty much any time you

            knowingly accessed a computer without authorization

            it’s technically illegal.

        • Hasherm0n@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Firesheep!

          That plugin and others that came after, was one of the things that finally got websites to start using https on everything, not just the log in page.

        • DaveA
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          8 months ago

          It did! Even worked on WEP encrypted wifi!

      • SolarMech@slrpnk.net
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        8 months ago

        Looking back, I probably shouldn’t have been doing that. Definitely illegal.

        You know that stuff you post on lemmy is probably on databases everywhere for like, forever, right?

        • gaael@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Who’s gonna press charges for the “hey mom, today I ate my poo” message they sent 10 years ago ?

        • cbarrick@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          No one is going to press charges about me fucking around with their FB accounts 10 years ago.