 Why is "exploiting" a website illegal?
mechanical_fish: Three observations.One: There are specific laws against unauthorized access to computer systems:http://www.ncsl.org/programs/lis/CIP/hacklaw.htmThese acts are generally considered illegal because... they contravene laws!Two: "What defines the line between legal and not?" The answer, ultimately, is judges and juries. These people have a wide range of discretion and are often surprisingly reasonable. (Although certainly not always. And they cost a lot to convince, and they can be randomly unreasonable, which is why there are a lot of jury-trial horror stories and why lawyers prefer to avoid jury trials whenever possible.)If I leave a loaded gun lying around and you pick it up and shoot me dead, the legality of your action is going to depend crucially on what you can make the prosecutor and the jury believe. If you convince them that you did it by accident -- that you were honestly just playing around with the gun on the assumption that nobody would be dumb enough to leave a loaded gun around -- you might be found innocent. If you had a documented motive for killing me, or were arguing with me at the time in front of witnesses, or if there were no witnesses... well, good luck.Finally, when you say:It doesn't harm any end-users... at worst it only modifies their profile page.You are making a lot of unwarranted assumptions. For one thing: If you publicly deface a website you advertise the existence of an exploit which someone else might then use for evil purposes. But, more importantly: Who says that an edit to a user profile is always harmless? People have lost relationships, job leads, careers, and reputations over such "trivial" things. Remember the poor teacher whose Windows box got infected by a virus and spewed porn links all over the screen in front of the students? The woman who lost her job and narrowly missed being convicted as a sex offender by a crazy prosecutor?http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10107743-83.htmlIf I were a teacher and someone defaced my online profile with a porn link I'd consider it a direct threat to my family's life.