QUOTE (perlmunky @ Mar 9 2009, 06:34 PM)

How would you feel if someone hacked your favorite web forum through a web chat interface? Now if that person discovered a potential exploit and informed the site admin before anyone else discovered the same fault, then that would be a good thing. How about instead of that they started doing naughty things?
Yes, there is very much an ethical hacker movement - consider Anonymous and their campaign against the cult of scientology. They fall under the umbrella of
hacktivism. Geeks have power on the web

And with such power comes great responsibility or a great potential for abuse.

Can I just ask perlmunk...how does this hypothetical someone discover this hypothetical potential exploit- by accident or because he was really looking for "it" or some such similar stuff? And if he is actually looking for it, the next question is why....compulsion, obsession, altruism, boredom, insomnia etc...and as you had demonstrated, he could've gone either way. So if you have a real "movement", who gets to decide which way to go?
And can this hactivism, this white hat hacker movement balance out the existence of these evil black hat crackers? Thanks perlmunk for all these info. It's a good thing that I'm not a scientologist...you geeks are kinda scary...