I won't give my email or its password to you, but if you can find it, hack it and decrypt my emails, then it would be only my fault, and you will have my respect.
"Fault" is not in question here either. Let's say I leave my front door unlocked. If you enter my home without my permission, you have trespassed and can be charged with a crime. The only thing I would be "at fault" for is making a lackluster attempt at securing my home. I don't forfeit protection from trespass under the law for that act though.
You see, locks are not what govern access; laws are. HTP is clearly in the wrong here. They forced entry in to Linode's systems, then attempted to extort Linode in an effort to achieve their goals. Swap out Linode's servers for Linode's offices, and there's no question that HTP are operating outside the boundaries of ethical behavior.
The main goal of my comments is to object to the opinion that hacking is somewhat comparable to physical break and enter actions. This is an age where one can find himself in prison for tens of years for hacking and getting access to information (the prospects of Aaron) or even for IP violations, as it were a murder or rape.
Being in an underground hackers crew is much fun and possibilities to learn things for young men who are smart and different than their friends. Those guys and gals are the future top-class engineers at Google and other IT giants and I want them to continue hacking and growing personally and professionally, not rotting in the prison.
For example, poorly written laws make even simple port scanning a risky activity. I agree that this is ridiculous, but you needn't defend HTP here in order to take that position. If anything, HTP are to blame for the overreaction from policy makers. They are having a very difficult time distinguishing between mischief and mayhem.
The law should take context in to account. If you were caught exploring an old, abandoned warehouse, you might end up with a misdemeanor trespass charge (hopefully), but if you're caught probing a corporate server, the current climate seems to dictate that you'll land a felony in short order. You've got groups like HTP to thank for that because of their extortion activities and willingness to leverage the well being of innocent people in their trivial games.
Or the next members of the many criminal syndicates on the internet who steal/harass/blackmail with little regard of the consequences.
I had a quick look on the Wikipedia page but couldn't see anything there.
That's really besides the point though. Anyone who seeks to boil "right and wrong" down to a simple principle that applies in all cases is holding simplicity above practicality. "Simple principles" are no more sustainable than utopian ideologies. The reality is that right and wrong are subtle and contextual. Bringing Stuxnet in to the Linode discussion is just an effort to sidetrack the topic.
Any way you slice it, HTP has dragged "innocents" in to the fight. It's not right when governments do it on the world stage. It's not right when thugs and gangsters do it by terrorizing neighborhoods with gang violence. It's not right when crackers do it during their internet turf battles.
1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel
Ah yes, the "might makes right" philosophy that we all know and admire from primary school.
The US/Israel are involved in a proxy war with Iran that involves cyberwarfare, clandestine operations and conventional military strikes (in the case of Israel striking Iranian-sourced Syrian weaponry).
It's an extremely poor example to use open cyberwarfare between nations engaged in everything but overt warfare to attempt to legitimize black hat hacking.
