From the “No good deed goes unpunished” files, this week came news of a German programmer who probably wishes he had selected better clients. According to Heise Online (English translation), a freelance programmer — referred to only as “defendant” in the article — was retained by a company to look into a database problem in their system. His investigation revealed that the customer’s database was being filled with log messages from a third-party service called Modern Solution GmbH & Co. KG. over a MySQL connection to a remote server. Assuming this connection was dedicated for his client’s use, the programmer looked at the executable used to make the connection with a text editor, which revealed a password in plain text. Upon connecting to the remote database, he found that it not only contained data for all of Modern Solution’s customers, but also data for all the end users of their customers.
Realizing he’d unintentionally wandered into verboten territory, the programmer immediately backed out and contacted Modern Solutions. They quickly fixed the issue, and then just as quickly reported him to the police. Their “investigation” revealed that the programmer had “decompiled” the executable to obtain the password, in violation of German law. The judge agreed, stating that merely looking at and using the password constituted a criminal offense, regardless of intent and despite the fact that Modern Solution had provided the password to the programmer’s client when they sold them the software. The upshot of all of this nonsense? A €3,000 fine for the programmer, if the verdict stands on appeal. It could have been worse, though; German law allows for up to three years in prison for such offenses.
Speaking of legal nonsense, the Venn diagram of dystopian fiction is edging ever closer to becoming just a bunch of concentric circles with news of an INTERPOL white paper that details international law enforcement opportunities challenges presented by the metaverse. With the frightening title “Grooming, radicalization and cyber-attacks: INTERPOL warns of ‘Metacrime’,” the white paper anticipates a day when police will be faced with “virtual crime scenes where there is no physical evidence to be collected – just digital interactions involving virtual assets such as cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).” Crimes they imagine taking place in this imaginary world include obvious yet ill-defined crimes such as grooming and radicalization, but also “virtual trespassing” into private metaverse property and theft from digital avatars. To some degree, we get their point; wherever people go, crime will follow. And it makes sense to be ahead of the curve, of course. But “metacrime” is a little too close for comfort to various sci-fi visions of crime.
In today’s “Google’s Gonna Google” news, it looks like the tech giant is floating changes to how it touts Incognito mode on Chrome browsers. Right now, the splash screen that pops up on Chrome incognito windows has comforting verbiage about how you’ll be browsing privately, and that you won’t leave any trace of which sites (ahem) you visited. But on Chrome Canary, which is a bleeding edge browser intended mainly for developers and gets nearly daily updates, the incognito splash screen now has more weasel words, saying that your browsing session will be more private than in a regular window, and offers a warning that data will still be collected. It’s probably not news to most readers that just because the calming visage of “Heisen-Nerd” appears doesn’t mean nobody is looking over your virtual shoulder while browsing, but it’s interesting that Google seems to be planning on making that clearer to the general public.
And finally, if you’re looking for a side hustle and have an extra $75,000 a month to spare, you might want to consider going into business as a rural ISP. That seems to be the intention of Starlink’s Community Gateways program, which lets participants access the satellite internet company’s 10-Gbps connection via a special gateway kit. As opposed to the flat user terminals we’re used to seeing, the gateways look more like miniature radomes; in a “Dishy McFlatface” world, we shudder to think what the nickname for these things will be. Setting up a Community Gateway seems like a pretty serious undertaking, as in addition to the $75K a month, you need to provide a suitable site with power and “lifting equipment,” as well as a startup fee of $1.25 million. But for someone with the right location and the proper skills, this could be a great opportunity.
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- Source: https://hackaday.com/2024/01/28/hackaday-links-january-28-2024/
