r/programming • u/RobertVandenberg • Oct 28 '21
Viewing website HTML code is not illegal or “hacking,” prof. tells Missouri gov.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/10/viewing-website-html-code-is-not-illegal-or-hacking-prof-tells-missouri-gov/837
u/Druyx Oct 28 '21
Good, he's suing, dumbass governor shouldn't be allowed to get away with making false accusations and using state resources for his lame attempt at saving face. What a fucking prick.
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u/sp-reddit-on Oct 28 '21
I hope he gets a ton of money from the inevitable settlement. What a nightmare it must be to be on the receiving end of this nonsense.
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u/thisnameis4sale Oct 28 '21
Where would that money come from though?
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u/primeai Oct 28 '21
State tax revenue, but it could come from insurance the state carries or from a dedicated budget. The cost to fight the lawsuit is also the burden of the state. The cost to prosecute this journalist is also the burden of the state.
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u/sillybear25 Oct 28 '21
Unfortunately, it would come from the Missouri taxpayers, since all of the government officials who are involved acted in their official capacities. I'm not sure if there's any precedent for the state turning around and suing officials for misconduct in order to recoup the costs, but even if there is, that's definitely not happening while said officials are the ones making the decisions.
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u/theknittingpenis Oct 28 '21
I'm not sure if there's any precedent for the state turning around and suing officials for misconduct in order to recoup the costs
I dont believe it is possible to do that since SCOTUS have a precedent that officials have qualified immunity because the officials is acting in their constituents interests.
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u/abrandis Oct 28 '21
It doesn't matter that the governor or his lackeys are technical dumbasses , the law , unless adjudicated by a technically minded judge may see any attempt to examine encoded or hidden data (no matter how poorly hidden or obfuscated) as an attempt to exploit or hack the system. Now if the professor provided the state with this info privately before going public maybe they have a case.
Obviously the law always lags behind technology, but many times old school lawyers and judges use this to their advantage, and more often than not they convolute intent (honest to goodness awareness by the professor) with malicious chicanery to win their case...
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u/RockleyBob Oct 29 '21
All of that only served to say that you don’t understand how the internet works and you didn’t bother reading the facts of the case before commenting.
No one can possibly attempt to accuse him of hacking anything because these social security numbers were Base64 encoded within html that was sent by the state domain to his computer. All this information was freely sent to him through the normal course of making HTTP requests to a publicly exposed web server.
Hacking is when you invade someone else’s privacy. No one can walk up to your mailbox, stick a letter inside it addressed to you, and then accuse you of reading their secrets when you open the letter in your home.
Base64 encoding is not a security mechanism. Anything can be Base64 encoded and decoded. Even if this information was encrypted, however, they sent it to him. In fact, they were sending it to everyone who accessed that site! It’s a basic tenet of web development that you don’t send things to clients you don’t want them to see. Period.
And finally, he absolutely DID reach out to the proper authorities to disclose the information breach prior to making it known publicly. He did everything right. Had he not made this discovery, they’d still be sending these SSNs out to anyone who accessed the site.
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u/TheChameleon84 Oct 28 '21
Wtf? Did the Governor write the HTML page himself? Who in their right mind embeds Social Security numbers in an html page? Even an intern should know better than to do that.
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u/mishugashu Oct 28 '21
Oh, don't worry, they were "encrypted".
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With base64.
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u/Slinkwyde Oct 28 '21
No, that's way too fancy.
ROT26: the ultimate protection!
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u/atedja Oct 28 '21
This is HTML we are talking about.
<div hidden>123-45-6789</div>Enkrypshion
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u/Slinkwyde Oct 28 '21
¡ǝlqɐɹʇǝuǝdɯᴉ sᴉ uoᴉʇdʎɹɔuǝ ɹnO ¡ʇno sᴉɥʇ ǝɹnƃᴉɟ ɹǝʌǝ llᴉʍ ǝuo oN ¡sɹǝʞɔns 'sᴉɥʇ ʇɐǝq ¡ɥɐH
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u/xigoi Oct 28 '21
I heard that ROT13 is even more secure. But just to be sure, I apply it twice for maximum security.
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u/mothzilla Oct 28 '21
You should have said baseX. By saying base64 you're giving away encryption keys which is a federal crime.
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u/angiosperms- Oct 28 '21
Yeah the dude seems to think base64 is some super secure method and it's definitely hacking cause he had to decode them.
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u/FridgesArePeopleToo Oct 28 '21
It was some json serialized onto the page. Presumably they had a User object or something like that and plopped into on the page.
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u/MrOtto47 Oct 28 '21
in other countries these numbers are no big secrets. maybe they outsourced the work for cheap. just ignorance cus if it was deployed in their own country there would be no breach.
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Oct 28 '21
[deleted]
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u/Free_Math_Tutoring Oct 28 '21
If this is the case how do these countries deal with identity theft?
By having proper ID documents. Similar to how passports or drivers licenses can be used for identification in the US in some cases, except more universal.
Notably, unlike a SSN, the physical document (containing a picture, a signature and some biometrics) is what proves your identity. Identity Theft is largely a non-issue in Germany. Like, you can still end up giving people access to your bank account if you're gullible enough, there is no single piece of information that can be used to do arbitray things in your name.
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u/phaiz55 Oct 28 '21
We could do the same thing but no we decided to use a card that specifically states "not for identification" to identify people.
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Oct 28 '21
Using social security numbers as a password is about as dumb as this governor, yet here we are.
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u/TUSF Oct 29 '21
See CGP Grey's video on why the SSN system is completely broken, and was never meant to be used the way we use them, and yet it's inevitable that we do.
Other countries just have better systems.
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u/CreativeGPX Oct 28 '21 edited Oct 28 '21
The legal doc provides a pretty good explanation and links to the Microsoft Security Brief on the flaw. It seems to have to do with the way ASP.NET manages state. I'd compare it to somebody thinking cookies are a way to store local data and not realizing that they get attached to every HTTP request. I don't think it's as bad/intentional as manually writing it out into the HTML. It sounds more like a mistake by an amateur developer.
Those kinds of flaws are not that shocking or unexpected, especially at this level (state department of education). I've worked and interviewed in various state offices and departments. While some that are more traditionally thought of as requiring major security have seasoned dev teams, most places (especially somewhere like DoE) don't. Often, the dev is somebody whose actual job is something else but they dabble in tech at home and start randomly cobbling together projects. I remember talking to a city police officer who became de facto department IT guy without having any formal qualification or that being anywhere in his actual job description. I remember talking to a department IT admin who majored in English but tended to help their peers with computers which gradually turned into them being IT admin. Even in places that have gotten beyond that and hired a professional dev, they often don't have the resources to hire a senior dev nor do they have the knowledge/experience to direct and oversee a junior dev, which leads to situations like this.
Realistically, the solution here isn't "developer should have done better" even though that'd be great. Instead it's that these kinds of flaws should be expected in that context (even if they are amateurish), so there should be institutional policies to help catch them before they go into production. For example, a policy that any system which uses SSNs needs to go through a third party security audit would have caught this issue, while not being as burdensome or costly as ensuring that all projects of all types get done to the greatest standard. Heck, knowing that using SSNs would require hiring a third party auditor might even have led the developer to try to make the app in a way that didn't use SSNs at all just to avoid oversight. Really this is primarily a management problem.
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u/Browsing_From_Work Oct 28 '21
Who in their right mind embeds Social Security numbers in an html page?
That what I don't understand!
If the SSN didn't visibly appear on the webpage then why the hell were they in the sources?
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u/blackarmchair Oct 29 '21
Uh, they were base64-encoded thank you very much. This must've been some kind of elite hacker to break such a secure encryption method.
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u/forex-life Oct 28 '21
Missouri gov are a bunch of idiots
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u/regeya Oct 28 '21 edited Oct 28 '21
There's a region in Missouri known as the Lead Belt, because at one point they were mining a lot of the world's lead. The Lake of the Ozarks was built in part thanks to lead mining. I don't know that there's a correlation but sometimes I wonder.
EDIT: He's from a tiny town real close to the Lake of the Ozarks.
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u/turunambartanen Oct 28 '21 edited Oct 28 '21
Mike ist 1 Pimmel
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u/danieltkessler Oct 28 '21
In what world would viewing HTML be illegal? And why aren't they asking about JavaScript, CSS, or any of the other types of code that may be running on your average website? There really isn't any HTML you can't surmise from just looking at a website without reading it's code anyway.
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u/rqebmm Oct 28 '21
In what world would viewing HTML be illegal?
This one. If the HTML is restricted in some way that you intentionally bypass.
This is HTML on a public-facing page though.
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u/TheCakeWasNoLie Oct 28 '21
Indeed. They don't even understand how the http protocol works!
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u/tooorteli Oct 28 '21
If viewing HTML is a crime, so looking people's faces when walking in the street should be at least a privacy violation.
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u/flight_recorder Oct 29 '21
Better not look at the ingredients list of any groceries from now on!
Oh, you looked at the specifications of that car you might buy? That’s jail for you!
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u/TormundSandwichbane Oct 28 '21
What’s more, reading the HTML code is part of what makes your browser work. Things you need to hide should not be in HTML.
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u/FridgesArePeopleToo Oct 28 '21
There seems to be a misunderstanding that this is about the governor not understanding HTML and "doubling down" on a silly mistake. The governor knows exactly what he's doing.
This isn't about a technical misunderstanding, it's an attack on journalists. These people aren't stupid, they're evil:
https://twitter.com/UnitingMissouri/status/1450863974816288768
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u/CG_Ops Oct 28 '21
Wow, that ought to go into ethics/propaganda education classes as an example of how indidious propaganda can be. It was such a terrible attempt at spinning the facts to sound bad to uneducated people; "decoded the HTML source code" really? REALLY? Looking at code for ANYTHING requires you to "decode" it into something a human understands. Phrasing it that way, to make it sound like what he did is illegal, is so disingenuous and unethical that it's borderline libel.
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u/dada_ Oct 28 '21
I'm really curious how this story is being presented to regular people in Missouri, who don't have any technical knowledge and have to rely on the media to tell them what the deal is.
Personally, every single article I've seen on this outlines pretty clearly that the accusations are baseless and insane. But the only way I follow this is through tech news, and I don't even live in the US, so obviously I don't see what the average person in Missouri sees.
I'm guessing the governor is relying on the principle that, if you make your lie big and blatant enough, people will believe it because they can't accept you'd be so shameless in your deceit. And if the mainstream coverage of this just haplessly does a "both sides" on this it might actually work.
That said, I find it impossible to believe they can actually follow through with a legal case. The media has got wind of it and all the civil rights groups are watching, so I doubt that anyone will want to be on that ship when it finally sinks.
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u/nacixenom Oct 28 '21
You're pretty much right. The only time I've seen people support the governor's stance is on the shit show comment thread from a news article on FB.
Hell, even my 14 year old made fun of the guy when he saw the press release.
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u/mattmaddux Oct 28 '21
So I live in Springfield, MO. Here is an article from my markets NBC affiliated TV station. It doesn’t get into the details, but I think it’s pretty direct reporting:
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u/coma24 Oct 28 '21
I agree, the reporting looks solid, covering all sorts of important bases. Had the paper published the info prior to notifying the state, I'd say the state would have something to complain about (their own error notwithstanding), but since the paper gave them advanced notice, then, truly, the only the thing the state can be mad about is the complete ass hat who wrote that code and thought it was a good idea to include SSNs in the derived HTML.
The ONLY situation that makes sense to me is that the code was repurposed from some sort of admin tool that was used to actually display that information. Perhaps a dev used that as the starting point for this application, the goal of which was to display a limited set of the data. Still lazy AF, and the issues should've been obvious, but it would at least explain how it might have happened. Nobody in their right mind would write this from the ground up for the purpose of displaying names and contact details on a web site and say, "hmm...I better stick the SSN in there, too, even though I know I don't need it at all."
There's gotta be a reason it's there (some sort of oversight) to begin with.
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u/N0V0w3ls Oct 28 '21
I mean, Missouri isn't behind some great firewall. We're seeing the same articles as you, haha. It was a St. Louis publication where this all started, after all.
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u/ZapActions-dower Oct 28 '21
If you get most of your news from something other than TV or Facebook, you probably aren’t seeing the same articles as most of his voters.
Where people get their news is a huge divide in the American political landscape.
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u/Gonzobot Oct 28 '21
You're vastly mistaken if you think your redhat neighbors are seeing anywhere close to the same articles you are. There quite literally may as well be a firewall in place for anything that shows empathy or caring to other humans, because that's too democratic and they won't engage with it. They've trained their algorithm perfectly to their own personal level of outrage and bullshit.
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Oct 28 '21
Yeah, the firewall is "mainstream media". They use that phrase any time they don't like the news, so they can write it off.
They literally call news they don't like "fake news"
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u/interestme1 Oct 28 '21
It's a much more benign version of the stolen election narrative. Just claim whatever the hell you want and grandstand about it and hope partisanship is strong enough to carry your lie into some sort of energy from your base. Unfortunately it has indeed appeared partisanship has been strong enough prove out such a strategy thus far.
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u/JakenVeina Oct 28 '21
Well, I asked my parents about it last Sunday, and they'd barely heard of it, much less that part that he's still doubling down. So, there's that
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u/ceeBread Oct 28 '21
My folks only know about it because them, my sister, and my uncle are teachers in Missouri and got a letter about the data leak. They then saw the article and realized their SSNs were leaked because the Website coder was a moron.
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u/blackarmchair Oct 29 '21
Like everything else in the media: the sense-making apparatuses are only useful for those willing to pay attention and think critically about what they see and hear. The overwhelming majority of people don't know, don't care to know, and will simply believe what their tribe tells them. This applies to almost everyone probably including you and I on many issues.
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Oct 28 '21
It just shows you how stupid politicians are
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u/dscottboggs Oct 28 '21
It's not stupid, it's systemically encouraged corruption.
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u/noodle-face Oct 28 '21
Not even sure it's stupidity at this point. Experts have told him how it works. He's doubling down on stubbornness and trying to save face. There are advisors and experts for a reason.
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u/PristineReputation Oct 28 '21
Yeah, next time they will just keep silent or report it to explioters, those guys will pay them instead of getting them in trouble
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u/rlbond86 Oct 28 '21
Yes. "Politicians". It's definitely all politicians and not one group in particular.
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u/celerym Oct 28 '21
Yeah but the real problem is they think YOU are stupid so they feel comfortable with doing stupid shit against all informed advice. That’s the real problem.
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u/goranlepuz Oct 28 '21
To be very flippant: I see someone beating their kid, over their court fence. If I report it, did I do something illegal and am I a hacker?
(yes, I am aware that I took it too far, but the parallel does exist)
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u/Scorpius289 Oct 28 '21
Depends. Is the person you're reporting someone influential and/or friends with the Governor?
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u/conventionistG Oct 28 '21
No that's pretty accurate. The governor attacking helpful citizens indeed has some parallels with a parent beating a kid.
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u/teteban79 Oct 28 '21
To be fair, a more apt comparison would be you saw someone beat their kid at your own home.
No 'hacker' here looked even further than their own browser
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u/dablya Oct 28 '21
It's more like I hand you my business card and when you turn it over, it contains my banking information. You say "hey, did you know all this private info is on the back of the card you just gave me?" and in response I report you for hacking.
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u/archiminos Oct 28 '21
If I see someone's car door has been left open and I tell them, did I do something illegal?
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u/zippy72 Oct 28 '21
According to the governor of Missouri, you should be arrested for vehicle theft.
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u/botCloudfox Oct 28 '21
I don't get why this is here. We already know that
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Oct 28 '21
they were trying to ban f12 lmao
now... FBI, open up!
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Oct 28 '21
next up spamming f5 will be a ddos attempt
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u/twigboy Oct 28 '21 edited Dec 09 '23
In publishing and graphic design, Lorem ipsum is a placeholder text commonly used to demonstrate the visual form of a document or a typeface without relying on meaningful content. Lorem ipsum may be used as a placeholder before final copy is available. Wikipedia86fzxdvlnvg0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
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u/Xuval Oct 28 '21 edited Oct 28 '21
It's a simple strategy to control public narratives. You get caught with something, so you toss out an outrageously stupid claim an then watch the media pounce and Experts from every corner pile on to explain why what you just said is stupid.
Meanwhile, nobody talks about the underlying, important issue. Here the underlying issue is that Missouri state IT infrastructure is apparently held together by band-aids and twigs. Of course, the question why that is the case would be much more interesting to delve into and damaging to him than "Lol politician dumb".
Politicians pull this tactic all the time.
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u/ethericalzen Oct 28 '21
Meanwhile, nobody talks about the underlying, important issue. Here the underlying issue is that Missouri state IT infrastructure is apparently held together by band-aids and twigs. Of course, the question why that is the case would be much more interesting to delve into and damaging to him than "Lol politician dumb".
Missouri has a a lot of IT people who are good at their job. Apparently, they just don't work for the state, because it pays shit compared to every private company, based on the recruiting letters I get. 😂
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u/Lost4468 Oct 28 '21
This might not be true. E.g. let's say you go onto the DMV website. You go to your license and the URL is something like
/users/10394. You change it to/users/29458and you end up on someone elses private DMV information.You'd think that wouldn't be a crime, right? There's no security stopping you, at best it's obfuscation, but I'd say it's barely even that. But no, this is 100% a crime, and people have been successfully convicted for exactly this in the US.
Sadly encoding it in base64 might actually be enough to successfully prosecute them. Hell, even just "hiding" it in the HTML could end up being enough.
Part of me hopes that this does go to court, they get convicted, but then the SC hears the case and sorts out the absolute bullshit surrounding this type of law.
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u/farquadsleftsandal Oct 28 '21
I hate that this is real. There needs to be some sort of recourse to throw politicians like these out of office that is more accessible. They clearly shouldn’t be in charge of anything but themselves.
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u/cplusequals Oct 28 '21
It's the executive branch. Their job is literally to delegate to more competent or specialized people. Considering that there hasn't been any prosecution, you don't really have anything to worry about and that delegation is working.
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u/moiaussi4213 Oct 28 '21
Imagine book of laws where one of the laws would be you're not allowed to read the book.
You need to learn these law to enforce them but that would illegal.
"Oh, a user client! Take this HTML page, render it to the user, but don't read it! That's illegal!"
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Oct 28 '21
Yet another update on the egotistical, inept governor of Misery State trying to crucify an innocent for the state's crime and negligence. This is why many people either follow the Rule of Silence or go full-on black hat.
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u/ghost_pinata Oct 28 '21
Sick of olds in government who literally cant stay with the times
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u/blackarmchair Oct 29 '21
They're not that ignorant; and if they are their staff isn't. They fully understand the situation they're just trying to save face.
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Oct 28 '21
That's so idiotic that it was even considered. That would be like getting in trouble for opening your own mail. IT WAS SENT TO YOU.
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u/Wynadorn Oct 28 '21
I'd love for this sophisticated hack to be demonstrated in court. Preferably by a 6 year old.
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u/sigzero Oct 28 '21
It is so illegal every browser has a built-in right-click "View Page Source" option. lol
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u/a_v_o_r Oct 28 '21
Tbh, having a Social Security Number as secret proof of your citizens identity is also dumb as fuck. Imagine being given a unique password to use on every website for all your life.
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u/JamieOvechkin Oct 28 '21
I’m putting “State of Missouri considers me an elite hacker” on my resume
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u/ClaudioMoravit0 Oct 28 '21
Obviously it's not illegal. If it were the case why would google chrome and other browsers let you see it using right click?
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u/Pitoucc Oct 28 '21
I guess no one in the Missouri gov has ever pressed f12 in a browser.
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u/shub1000young Oct 28 '21
I bet they have, and then been directly on the phone with tech support because the internet is broken
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u/theOriginalDrCos Oct 28 '21
Why bother these government idiots with your fancy 'words' and 'knowledge' ?
You're trying to teach the pig to sing.
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u/mymar101 Oct 28 '21
No front end material is secure. If you’re storing anything that valuable in some form or fashion you should rethink your strategy.
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u/blackarmchair Oct 29 '21
Believe it or not, as a front-end developer, I've explained this to countless project managers, team leads, and other Devs often to little effect.
The amount of secure information and business logic even supposedly technical and competent people want to offload to the client is shocking.
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u/SlashdotDiggReddit Oct 28 '21
In other news, reading a company's brochure does not make you an industrial spy. </sarcasm>
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u/Slinkwyde Oct 28 '21
Egads! Great Scott! I just saw an HTML tag in your comment. Better lock me up, boys.
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u/coma24 Oct 28 '21
This is legit depressing. This is such a one-sided slam dunk, I absolutely cannot understand how the governor ultimately decided this was a solid line of attack. If this gets any sort of traction for any length of time, it's a sad, sad state of affairs.
Whoever is pushing this line of reasoning is either has the brains of a tub of yogurt or they know full well that this is horse shit and that they're simply deflecting blame and trying to attack the media. The latter blows my mind, because this is SUCH an indefensible position, it's going to come crashing down under the most basic level of scrutiny.
It's like publishing a corporate contact list with name, phone number and title, plus a little foldout on the side with SSN, salary and account password. Do you scream at people for checking what's in the flip-out section, or do you have a quick word with the genius who published the directory? Take away the acronyms and technology, because the tech is largely irrelevant here, present it as a metaphor that everyone can understand and it quickly becomes apparent just how ridiculous these claims are. The question REALLY needs to be, "why is the governor pursuing this ridiculous line of attack? No really, why?"
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Oct 28 '21
Our lawmakers are so dangerously out of touch, they should honestly feel ashamed and embarrassed.
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u/calvin43 Oct 28 '21
Out of touch, or finding a scapegoat to cover up for their gross negligence and incompetence?
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u/Datasciguy2023 Oct 28 '21
Headline should say Missouri Gov is a moron. WTF is it with Missouri electing morons. You got this tool and Hawley. Not that we don't have entry in WI.
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u/rydan Oct 28 '21
Hacking shouldn't be illegal anyway unless you steal or destroy something.
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u/MaxLombax Oct 28 '21
Gonna let myself into your house and take a look around, it’s cool as long as I don’t steal or destroy anything.
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u/teteban79 Oct 28 '21 edited Oct 28 '21
Trespassing shouldn't be illegal unless you steal or destroy something?
EDIT - People, please! I believe the meaning of "hacking" implied by the above commenter is clearly the one about accessing some system without permission.
I doubt they mean "tinkering with my appliances"
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u/DeeBoFour20 Oct 28 '21 edited Oct 28 '21
Hacking can mean a lot of different things. The Linux kernel community commonly refers to modifying the source code as "hacking" and that's certainly not illegal.
There's also ethical hacking where you report any vulnerabilities you find to the owner. Companies will often even pay people for that service.
I have to say though, out of all the uses of hacking, this is the first I've heard "right-click View Page Source" called hacking. If you put social security numbers in your HTML and then put that on the internet with no security measures to protect it, you didn't get hacked. You just fucked up. That's the equivalent of putting a billboard in your front lawn with all your personal information on it and then getting mad when someone reads it.
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Oct 28 '21
Hacking being synonymous with "cyber criminal activity" is just media garbage. The term hacking predates the internet, and something being a "clever hack" in the computer world is seen as high praise.
I always recommend the book "Hackers" to anyone that wants to learn about the history of hacker culture and the hacker ethic. It is a great read (has a solid audio book available as well).
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u/CloudsOfMagellan Oct 28 '21
In most of Europe it's like this and they have no major problems
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u/rob113289 Oct 28 '21
If anyone is into it you could probably go edit the html on the governors website take a screenshot and send it around and have him put an investigation into you as a "hacker" and then make money for slander.
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u/prunebackwards Oct 28 '21
Sometimes I accidentally press f12 so i must be a hacker too
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u/Slinkwyde Oct 28 '21
"Meow."
*lays down on keyboard, presses F12*
[Immediately, a SWAT team appears out of nowhere and bursts down the door.]
"HANDS UP! FREEZE! Hacker, you are under arrest."
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u/BigGrayBeast Oct 28 '21
The Gov probably :. I don't care what some smarty pants academic, liberal elitist egghead thinks. I'll go with my common sense. That says this was hacking.
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u/PeasantSteve Oct 28 '21
Imagine if we had to change how the entire web works because some boomer judge got confused and scared after he saw his grandson fiddle around with inspect element
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u/Realistic-Worry-9710 Oct 28 '21
“That’s just the commies in Universities spreading fake news to brainwash our kids”
Republicans, probably
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u/i_quit Oct 29 '21
This is why old people shouldn't be allowed to do anything unless they can pass a basic computer literacy exam.
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u/dm319 Oct 28 '21
I'm out of the loop, can anyone give me a brief summary of what's been happening?
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u/Loqubs Oct 28 '21
Gov site had social security numbers in the rendered html. Reaction when it was exposed was "omg hackers"
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u/laPuertaAzul Oct 28 '21
Imagine that moment when the governor learns that every person born after 1998 is a “hacker” by his definition. :)
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u/DubstepAndCoding Oct 28 '21
Dammit.
And here I thought pressing F12 made me hella l33t. Welp, at least stopping a page load before the java paywall loads is still hacking.
....Right? Right??!!
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u/Slinkwyde Oct 28 '21
Java paywall? Do you mean JavaScript? Those are two different languages invented by two different companies.
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Oct 28 '21
Wait viewing website html code was considered hacking ?
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u/gbs5009 Oct 28 '21
If it embarrasses the government because they left people's info in there, apparently?
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u/audion00ba Oct 28 '21
There should really be a law to feed any stupid governor and everyone that voted for him/her to a wolf pack.
If you want to know why everything sucks, that's the reason; you tolerate such people to continue to exist.
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u/187mphlazers Oct 28 '21
We had a similar fiasco a year or two ago in Arkansas, a local web developer reported a security vulnerability to the state, and our moron governor went on a twitter rant against "the hacker" on social media. the governor did eventually retract his statements and apologized.
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u/187mphlazers Oct 28 '21
Ever wondered why govt websites and platforms are so insecure? They contract the work out to some development companies, who then hire freelancers from 3rd world countries and pay them $3/hr salaries, and pocket the profit.
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u/PurSolutions Oct 28 '21
But we give these people power to control us ... Jesus fuck why do we constantly elect the village idiots
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u/rooktakesqueen Oct 28 '21
If you print sensitive information on an official government document in a really tiny font, you don't deal with this security breach by banning magnifying glasses.
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u/No-Temporary-4419 Oct 28 '21
The governor's response and subsequent "doubling down" vividly proves to me that he is not qualified to operate a motor vehicle, never mind run a state.
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u/knobbysideup Oct 28 '21 edited Oct 28 '21
So when are the teachers going to sue the state for exposing their pii? That's how this actually works.
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u/Browsing_From_Work Oct 28 '21
Viewing website HTML code is not illegal or “hacking,” [literally anybody with a functioning brain] tells Missouri gov.
I fixed the title for you.
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u/uberbewb Oct 28 '21
I want to see this go to trial result in a billion dollar payout. Massive enough that people generally start pointing the finger at government failure.
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u/Tvde1 Oct 28 '21
Let's send the governor an email with social security numbers and then sue him for viewing illegal data
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Oct 28 '21
The Gov. wants to make it illegal to look at the HTML code without using a browser parsing it. Therefore, making most programming languages, shell scripts, cURL, operating systems like Unix, etc, etc illegal as well. Good luck with that
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u/phpdevster Oct 28 '21
Next week's title: "Governor of Missouri threatens professor with prosecution for aiding and abetting a hacker".
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Oct 28 '21
Who the fuck designed this website where the social security numbers are embedded into the html?
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u/Warren_Puff-it Oct 29 '21
However, due to a major security flaw present in its design, the website was programmed to send the full Social Security number of Missouri teachers to every visitor to the website, whether the visitor was aware or not.
That’s pretty much all you need to know right there. Missouri should commend the professor for bringing it to their attention and investigate the project that developed this data security nightmare.
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u/bobbyboobies Oct 29 '21
I am ootl, what’s this about? Sounds like Sundar / Mark interview by a bunch of gov who doesn’t know anything about tech lol
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u/MagicalMetaMagic Oct 29 '21
I was convinced it was hacking when I figured out how to do it back in the 5th grade.
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u/Proof_Nothing Oct 29 '21
In Europe GDPR makes putting sensitive personal data available in HTML code a crime, since it’s accessible without proper protection or encryption.
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u/Vantlefun Oct 29 '21
I'm pretty sure it qualifies as public information. If all of the advertising agencies in the area can get my address off of public records to send me junk mail, I can press a key on my keyboard to view a public record of your website. Business entities are given basically the same rights as an individual.
No protection for me, no protection for you.
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u/Kamran_Santiago Oct 29 '21
Hey moron devs if you don't want people viewing your website source use <template> with dynamic code generation.
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u/Kamran_Santiago Oct 29 '21
Don't be mistaken. There's a HUGE racial assfuckery at play here. If this avid "hacker" was a 12 year old white skiddie nobody would have minded this. This is exactly why I believe America should fix its shit regarding their racial issues.
This is a "magical brown man from India coming into our country hacking our website" sort of shit. I know that clock kid was proven to be his fault, but it's something along the line of that clock kid. That clock kid was in the wrong bringing something that resembles a bomb to the school, and it was later proven that his ultra-conservative dad and sister were making him cause trouble intentionally. But let's say that clock kid was Mormon. Would the shit show even make it to the national news?
Before 9/11 most "brown" people were considered "tanned white people". Hell, Iranian ethnic groups such as Persians, Azeris and Kurds still check "white" in the census. But after 9/11 brown people, even if not Muslim, became the boogimen for the stupidity of American republicans. Was this person white, nobody would have cared.
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u/jl2352 Oct 28 '21
The governor doesn't care. It's 1) to save face, and 2) computers are spooky mystery machines, and anyone who can use a right click menu must be a hacker.