Given that he developed a "wardriving" application, black hat connotations are not entirely unreasonable. The use of his talents to hoover up data without permission certainly doesn't offer much in the way of defense, either.
Ha, your parent post could almost have been written about your post too.
Looking past the scare quotes, according to the FCC report it was just Kismet, and the problem basically just came down to deciding to write the non encrypted payloads to disk. He might know too much about wifi, but probably half the regular HN posters could have implemented the same system, if they chose to.
I know Kismet exists. I know I can install and run it. I know I can even break wi-fi encryption in some cases. But that doesn't mean I'm going to do this, for commercial purposes, for a company like Google.
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Given that he developed a "wardriving" application, black hat connotations are not entirely unreasonable. The use of his talents to hoover up data without permission certainly doesn't offer much in the way of defense, either.
Ha, your parent post could almost have been written about your post too.
Looking past the scare quotes, according to the FCC report it was just Kismet, and the problem basically just came down to deciding to write the non encrypted payloads to disk. He might know too much about wifi, but probably half the regular HN posters could have implemented the same system, if they chose to.
"if they chose to"
Precisely.
I know Kismet exists. I know I can install and run it. I know I can even break wi-fi encryption in some cases. But that doesn't mean I'm going to do this, for commercial purposes, for a company like Google.
Yes, it comes down to a choice, not scary hackers. That's what I wrote. Maybe I'm not understanding your point?
My point was that I agree with what you said. Nothing more.
Quotation marks indicate my skepticism of the term due to its use by DOJ in building their case.
Engaging in questionable behavior which others with similar skills forgo is what distinguishes black hat from white hat hacking.