5 ms·
But is it really stealing if the owner isn't deprived of use? It's just costless duplication of a nonscarce resource.
by tedunangst 3y ago
But is it really stealing if the owner isn't deprived of use? It's just costless duplication of a nonscarce resource.
- mmastrac 3y agoI know it's a non-serious play on the piracy/theft meme, but in seriousness, "stealing" is probably not the right word for private information leakage.
- andyferris 3y agoI think a sentences like "the Russian spy stole American military secrets", "a hacker stole my password" and "a very slow cross-site SVG filter attack stole a copy of my pixels" are perfectly valid and clear English. Piracy is the odd-one-out because it's about "stealing" non-secret information, which seems non-sensical.
- j16sdiz 3y ago"Stealing" non-secret information is like "stealing" toilet paper from public toilets.
- skybrian 3y agoIt's a bit odd to think of a password as a "non-scarce resource" when they protect scarce resources. I expect they're not often visible, though.
- hn_acker 3y agoActually, that brings up a potential problem for me because sometimes I do click the eyeball icon to show my password to myself. This attack might be too slow as long as I hide the password within 30 seconds, but future versions of the attack might be fast enough to capture multiple characters, especially if the malicious website hosting the iframe knows which pixel positions will be occupied by the password box.
- giantrobot 3y agoSomeone stealing my password can go hunter2ing their hunter2 in their hunter2.
- kube-system 3y agoThe word is used to refer to taking something without the right to do so. The key part is the lack of a right to do so, not depriving the owner. e.g. If you take someone's car while they're away on vacation and bring it back before they get home, it is still stealing, even if you topped up the tank and they never noticed.
- danielheath 3y agoNot to derail further, but iirc that’s not the case in most western jurisdictions (“intended to return it after using” is actually a defence against theft charges).
- dylan604 3y agois it? that would pretty much make GTA a non-issue if they all said that it was going to be returned.
- kube-system 3y agoYes, in the legal world there are more specific meanings of words (of which "stealing" usually isn't one) which may vary, but we're just talking about colloquial english here.
- codetrotter 3y agoAnalogies never work. The reason that it is wrong to take my car, even if I don’t notice, are multiple: - You are still depriving me of the possibility of using my own car, even if it happened to be the case that I didn’t need it. I could have come home early. I could have told some friend or family to pick up my car so that they could use it. I could have had an appointment that someone would come by to service my car while I was absent. All of this is made impossible if someone takes my car. - It still causes wear and tear on my car if you use it. - You could get into an accident, which could hurt you and damage my car. - I don’t want random strangers to sit their butts in my car. - etc
- kube-system 3y ago
- cosmotic 3y agoIt takes ~1hour to grab an unspecified portion of the screen (screenshots show a tiny 100x100 or so box). I'd say not costless.
- ryukoposting 3y agoImagine you're a shady streaming site running tons of shady ads. Now imagine one of your shady advertisers loads a shady iframe using this exploit. The targeted user keeps that tab open for a few hours- they're watching a show, after all. As the streaming site loading the add, you're none the wiser.
- ftxbro 3y agoYou wouldn't download a car.
- Dylan16807 3y agoHow do I live in the world where copying a password doesn't deprive the owner of anything?