IT consultant in Germany fined for exposing shoddy security::Spotting a plaintext password and using it in research without authorization deemed a crime
I hope it gets reversed in the next instance. The judge had it absolutely wrong. And the consultant did not expose it, but told the company directly that he is able to read the admin password without an effort. They sued for telling them. That’s absolutely the worst thing to do.
Not quite. He entered the password into phpMyAdmin and that’s when he went too far. Because from that point on he had access to protected data. You might think that’s silly, but that’s the law at the moment and the court has to apply it.
actually, that’s not what the law says.
the law says that “overcoming” security measures is a crime. nothing was “overcome”.
plaintext is simply not a “security measure” and the law was applied wrong.
there may have been some form of infringement in regards to privacy or sensitive data or whatever, but it definitely wasn’t “hacking” of any kind.
just like it isn’t “hacking” to browse someone’s computer files when they leave a device unlocked and accessible to anyone. invasion of privacy? sure. but not hacking.
and the law as written (§202a StGB) definitely states that security measures have to be circumvented in order to be applied.
that’s the problem with the case!
not that the guy overstepped his bounds, but that the law was applied blatantly wrong and no due diligence was used in determining the outcome of the case.
That’s your interpretation. The court said that at the moment he gained unlawful access to sensitive information he was in violation of the law. And I agree that entering a password you found is going too far. If you leave your car unlocked it’s still not OK for others to snoop around inside. Reporting a clear text password would have solved the issue just fine and not violated any laws.
actually, the law leaves remarkably little room for interpretation in this case.
here’s the law in full, emphasis mine:
Strafgesetzbuch (StGB) § 202a Ausspähen von Daten (1) Wer unbefugt sich oder einem anderen Zugang zu Daten, die nicht für ihn bestimmt und die gegen unberechtigten Zugang besonders gesichert sind, unter Überwindung der Zugangssicherung verschafft, wird mit Freiheitsstrafe bis zu drei Jahren oder mit Geldstrafe bestraft. (2) Daten im Sinne des Absatzes 1 sind nur solche, die elektronisch, magnetisch oder sonst nicht unmittelbar wahrnehmbar gespeichert sind oder übermittelt werden.
the text is crystal clear, that security measures need to be “overcome” in order for a crime to have been committed.
it is also obvious that cleartext passwords are NOT a “security measure” in any sense of the word, but especially in this case, where the law specifically says that the data in question has to have been “specially secured”. this was not the case, as evident by the fact that the defendant had easy access to the data in question.
this is blatant misuse of the law.
the data law makes no attempt to take into account the intent of the person, quite differently from when it comes to physical theft, which is immediately and obviously ridiculous.
you mentioned snooping around in a strangers car, and that’s a good comparison!
you know what you definitely couldn’t be charged with in the example you gave? breaking and entering!
because breaking and entering requires (in germany at least) that you gained access through illegal means (i.e.: literally broke in, as opposed to finding the key already in the lock).
but that’s essentially what is happening in this case, and that is what’s wrong with this case!
most people agree he shouldn’t have tried to enter the PW.
what has large parts of the professional IT world up in arms is the way the law was applied, not that there was a violation of the law. (though most in IT, like i am, think this sort of “hacking” shouldn’t be punishable, if it is solely for the purpose of finding and reporting vulnerabilities, which makes a lot of sense)
Having just implemented compliance with the new EU whistle blower regulations… this sounds illegal to me? Not sure what the judge is smoking, but this is going to be challenged in the E.U. courts at least.
That’s disgusting. That dude brought to light a serious security issue and is being punished for it. -_-
Let’s hope the obvious lie of the company will come back to bite them in the ass.
They insinuated he could only get that password from insider knowledge, when it would literally show up for anybody with notepad.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Back in June 2021, according to our pals at Heise, an contractor identified elsewhere as Hendrik H. was troubleshooting software for a customer of IT services firm Modern Solution GmbH.
And we’re told that Modern Solution’s program files were available for free from the web, so truly anyone could inspect the executables in a text editor for plain-text hardcoded database passwords.
In June, 2023, a Jülich District Court in western Germany sided with the IT consultant because the Modern Solution software was insufficiently protected.
“The penalty order is all the more shocking because it is fundamentally wrong,” wrote Steier, the blogger who helped bring the exposed database to light, in a post on Wednesday.
In a post to Mastodon, Wladimir Palant, a security researcher, software developer, and co-founder of Germany-based ad filtering biz eyeo, expressed frustration with the court’s decision.
"But it’s exactly as people feared: no matter how flawed the supposed ‘protection,’ its mere existence turns security research into criminal hacking under the German law.
The original article contains 659 words, the summary contains 166 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
