alt Hacker NewsHard-coded, publicly available credentials are criminal to circumvent in germany. See https://www.heise.de/en/news/Modern-Solution-Court-of-Appeal... which is now settled, since the appeal was rejected. https://www.heise.de/en/news/Federal-Constitutional-Court-re...
> At the end of the trial, however, this had little impact on the verdict. The presiding judge stated for the record that the mere fact that the [publicly available] software had set a password for the connection meant that viewing the raw data of the [publicly available] program and subsequently connecting to the [publicly available] Modern Solution database constituted a criminal offense under the hacker paragraph.
Yes, taking publicly available data verbatim (no ROT13, nothing) and talking to a publicly available server on the internet can in fact be a criminal offense.
Thank you for providing an example that is exactly showing how messed up this is:
> Der Vorsitzende Richter gab zu Protokoll, dass alleine die Tatsache, dass die Software ein Passwort für die Verbindung gesetzt habe, bedeute, dass ein Blick in die Rohdaten des Programms und eine anschließende Datenbankverbindung zu Modern Solution den Straftatbestand des Hackerparagrafen erfülle
> The Judge gave to protocol that just the fact that the software requires a password for the connection, implies that a look at the raw data of the program and a subsequent database connection is considered hacking.
So yes, entering an empty password can cause all of your electronic devices in all your registered residences to be seized as evidence.
Note that the decompilation is on the complexity level of "strings $binary".