ABC: a blogger "hacked" site to retrieve exposed IM screen name

[sabra]

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/10/statement_from_.html

Statement from ABC News

On Friday, ABC News published instant messages between a former page and Congressman Foley with the IM screen name of the teenage victim redacted. Immediately, we discovered that in one instance, the screen name of the teen on one IM exchange had not been properly redacted. ABC News immediately took down the posting , redacted the screen name and re-published the posting . We certainly believed that we had taken care of the issue quickly. Last evening, after an inquiry from Matt Drudge, it came to our attention that a blogger was able to access our deleted file (version 1) by typing in a slightly modified web address. To be clear, no one visiting our website would have simply stumbled on the old version. We thank the blogger and Drudge for bringing this to our attention.

[Warren DeMontague]

1. Wow. The crack staff at ABC news is on the case!

And by "crack staff", I mean they're on crack. No wonder they let religious right nutjobs put revisionist 9-11 history on the air as "factudrama"

[DUyellow]

4. Google would have it cached in a day

probably could have figured it out...
it was probably something like this
Version 1
www.abcnews.com/foleyIM.html
Version 2
www.abcnews.com/foleyIM_v2.html

Nobody Hacked your site, if you have it out there anybody can see it. Google would have it cached in a day if its on abcnews.com

[greyl]

2. Why did you use the word "hacked"?

All they did was go the address where the original image was.

[Iwasthere]

5. The same reason they keep saying a virus can be put into a voting machine

It isn't a virus that flips the votes to show the loser winning. It is a simple script that is put in there that performs that task.

[greyl]

6. You mean for the sake of being inaccurate? nt

[sabra]

7. that was my commentary, indeed. I have seen references

to scanning for files either manually or using a bot considered a form of hacking.

[greyl]

8. Ok, no big woop. :) nt

[seabeyond]

3. they thank them. and was it passionate america who then put it on

his website for all to see. i want to know. and ABC thanks them?

[blogslut]

9. That's not hacking

That's just skill.