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0 pointsbsaunder15y ago0 comments

Illumination is one thing. Enabling a ten year old to do malicious stuff with a few clicks and poorly considered actions is entirely another.

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evilduck15y ago

If it can be that easily scripted, 10 year olds were already doing it. Suppressing knowledge, especially knowledge of a flawed system, doesn't make the system safer.

In terms of severity, computing has overcome worse exploits; this is a problem awaiting an answer, which sounds like opportunity to me.

ramanujan15y ago

> Suppressing knowledge

Again, degrees matter. Abstract knowledge is one thing. A simple tool to facilitate griefing people is quite another.

Mobile web browsing existed before the Iphone. Search existed before Google. Telecommunication preceded the internet. You could share mp3s before Napster and mp4s before Youtube.

And you used to have to delve into Wireshark to pull this off, but now you can snag grandma's credentials from any Starbucks in the country with a mouse. Degrees do matter.

rsanders15y ago

And without raising awareness of the issue, everybody might always be somewhat vulnerable forever, whereas now that "we know", after being highly vulnerable for a short time everybody's vulnerability to this should drop to zero very quickly.

If you assume a limited number of evildoers and a limited ability to exploit this at will (e.g. you have to catch your victim in close proximity on public wi-fi that you're sharing with him), releasing a tool like Firesheep may produce significantly less total damage.

enneff15y ago

I know 10-year-olds who do this already.

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