I'm not proud that I stole from the vending machine. I'm proud that I figured out how to steal from it.
Fundamentally, I see no difference between being a 17 year old in a basement figuring out that if you send excessive amounts of data into an unchecked buffer, you can gain control over program flow, and being a 13 year-old kid figuring out that by rocking a machine back and forth, you can cause the front items to rub up against the edge of the rack, effectively sawing the plastic off. What is the difference really? Both are fine if you don't use it in the real world and illegal if you do.
And I don't think it's the same as crawling into an open window. Rather, it's more like lock picking, particularly after they started installing these rock-resistant cages and we had to get creative by using two-man teams (one rocking forward, one rocking back). I believe DefCon has a lock picking session every year.
Destructive security hacking isn't typically celebrated here either. Lock picking isn't destructive. The objection isn't the legality of it, but that you were stealing from a company in a couple of these cases.
Fundamentally, I see no difference between being a 17 year old in a basement figuring out that if you send excessive amounts of data into an unchecked buffer, you can gain control over program flow, and being a 13 year-old kid figuring out that by rocking a machine back and forth, you can cause the front items to rub up against the edge of the rack, effectively sawing the plastic off. What is the difference really? Both are fine if you don't use it in the real world and illegal if you do.
And I don't think it's the same as crawling into an open window. Rather, it's more like lock picking, particularly after they started installing these rock-resistant cages and we had to get creative by using two-man teams (one rocking forward, one rocking back). I believe DefCon has a lock picking session every year.