At Ed Felton's blog Freedom to Tinker, Felton wonders if "DMaul" -- the TribalWar.com user who compiled and later published the file -- might have been motivated by a desire to punish MySpace for leaving the hole open for over three months.
"This may be the most serious privacy breach yet at MySpace," Felton writes. "Kevin Poulsen's story at Wired News implies that the leak may have been deliberate payback for MySpace failing to fix the vulnerability that allowed the leaks"
Now suppose you know that a company’s product has a flaw that is endangering its customers, and the company is denying and delaying. There is something you can do that will force them to fix the problem -- you can arrange an attention-grabbing demonstration that will show customers (and the press) that the risk is real. All you have to do is exploit the flaw yourself, get a bunch of private data, and release it. Which is pretty much what DMaul did.
To be clear, Im not endorsing this course of action. I’m just pointing out why someone might find it attractive despite the obvious ethical objections.
DMaul compiled the images before MySpace fixed the bug, but didn't put them on BitTorrent until after. So unless DMail had plans to publish the file anyway, this isn't a case of somebody staging a splashy exploitation of a vulnerability in order hasten its closure.
DMaul did say he was trying to prove a point by publishing the photos, but his point wasn't that MySpace should fix its bugs faster, but rather, "It is ridiculous to think that there is privacy on public websites."
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