eBay pulls Vista laptop pwned in hacking contest

An eBay listing for the Windows Vista laptop that was successfully compromised at last week's Pwn2Own hacking contest was removed after the online auctioneer said it violated terms that forbid sales of items that might do harm. Shane Macaulay, who felled the machine with code that attacked a weakness in Adobe Flash, posted the …

[Jach]

Do harm?

I distinctly recall purchasing a sword through ebay... If that doesn't do harm, how is a little virtual-ness going to?

[Anonymous Coward]

Concerned

Terrorists could use almost anything on ebay to 'Do harm' if they dropped them on innocent patriots from the right height.

Surely thats 'Material support for terrorism' - off to Guantanamo for you ebay!

[Tim Bowden]

Harm

Of course the laptop in question could do harm; It has Vista installed. What more evidence do you need? It does harm by wasting so much of the users time (putting up with it's behavior, then installing something else to make it useful).

[Anonymous Coward]

Should eBay now remove all Vista listings ?

So until M$ / Adobe release a patch, I assume ALL Vista listings on eBay should be removed

[Jamie]

Harm???

If a laptop won at a hacking contest can do harm then maybe e-bay should close down it's entire technology section as anything here could come under the same sort of stupid rule.

[Andy Worth]

Sue Ebay?

I bought an electronic stapler from Ebay and while buggering about to determine how it worked, managed to put a staple into my finger. So should I now sue them for breach of their own terms?

[Anonymous Coward]

re: Should eBay now remove all Vista listings ?

"So until M$ / Adobe release a patch, I assume ALL Vista listings on eBay should be removed"

Maybe, but they should remove all the Apple listings first.

[Anonymous Coward]

fleabay

If only fleabay put the same effort into getting rid of scam auctions eh?

[Fox]

Do harm indeed...

Always one to give the benefit of the doubt, as I read the article I was thinking "good for eBay - disclosing the exploit before it's patch would certainly cause harm - to *lots* of people". Then I got to the last sentence... nope just cretins being cretins, as usual.

[Steven Hewittt]

re: Should eBay now remove all Vista listings ?

Or more accurately they should remove all systems that have Adobe flash player installed or anything by Apple - as they were the only two vendors that have exploits discovered at CanSecWest. (Not MS and not Canonical)

Fucking trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

"You can't sell anything that would do harm,"

Like a crossbow for instance?

http://cgi.ebay.com/180-LB-HUNTING-CROSSBOW-LASER-4x20-SCOPE-8-ARROWS_W0QQitemZ220219097613QQihZ012QQcategoryZ33972QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Mmmm... 180LB draw, most people would need a winch to just cock it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ouch

Unless you used Recorded Delivery, buyers can claim to PayPal that they never received an item and your money gets refunded to them without question (meaning you've lost the item and the cash).

That happened to me, despite having Proof of Posting, and made me so mad I kicked the cat - so there are plenty of harmful things on eBay.

[greg]

Laptop doing harm?

Short of blowing up in your face, how the hell can a laptop "harm" someone?

[George Johnson]

What a load!

A laptop that has been compromised might do harm? Lets rake through all the other systems for sale, the ones loaded with uncleaned spyware and virii(?) and then well talk. I bought simple thing a while back on eBay, an XBOX to PC USB adapter, the driver disk with it had a a bloody virus on it. I didn't go crying to eBay to get the seller banned or his.her aucitons pulled down. I simply "cleaned" the disk and got on with my life.

Jesus, given the right circumstances you could say a wax crayon should be banned as some moron might stick it up his nose or in his eye and kill himself! I hate to use the term "nanny state", but this all sounds a lot like eBay using this poor guy for some free publicity.

[Anonymous Coward]

also

dont forget all the ebay car/auto sales (or are evil bays profit on these too great to cut off) or all those items that are sold to person 3 years and older - what if they got into the hands of a infant?

or, items wiht VAT or sales tax.... paying taxes causes me mental anquish as does the colour yellow!

and as for NAZI daggers....

you can sell a Nazi Dagger as long as the sawstika is covere up.

But, if you uncover the logo its a dangerous and offence weapon that will bring down Christendom? (go figure?)

[Cameron Colley]

RE: also

"you can sell a Nazi Dagger as long as the sawstika is covere up."

I don't know for certain, but I suspect that has more to do with German law forbidding the display of swastikas than them being "harmful".

[Keith Glass]

OF COURSE it can do harm. . .it's running Windows. . .

. . .but they sell OTHER WinTel laptops.. .

[Paul Hamm]

New Terrorist WMD of choice

The mighty and all pwr4ul compromised MS Vista laptop. Rich, really, honestly, no kidding, they use em, you better watch out, Lions and Tigers and Lappies OH MYYYYYYYYY!

WMD such a stoopid acronym. Ask any vet that lost a body part just how massively destruct an ak-47 or m16 is. Last time I checked they where both considered weapons. Now what happened to my lithium? No thats not right we don't use that anymore. MMMM the red ones are best, make you go fasta.

~Paris because we all know how fascinated they are with shiny things. Ow Ah shiny SHINY!

[Matthew]

all windows and mac listings to be removed?

obviously the only thing allowed on ebay should be linux then =) windows vista does harm the user by its very exsistance

[Misha Gale]

Harmful effect

I think the theory goes that since the laptop hasn't been wiped since it was pwned, some black hat could buy the machine, then use some cunning forensics techniques to figure out how it was compromised in the first place. Thus giving the cyberterrorists access to an unpatched remote-code-execution vuln with which to create the next Blaster worm.

No, I don't buy it either.

[Anonymous Coward]

HUH?

you can buy swords and cars on ebay.

[Ash]

@Cameron Colley

'I don't know for certain, but I suspect that has more to do with German law forbidding the display of swastikas than them being "harmful".'

How does this apply to eBay? What jurisdiction does Germany have over eBay?

eBay.de might be in trouble, but eBay.co.uk, .com, or whatever, unless hosted in Germany, is pretty much in the clear on that one.

[Dark_rain]

@Misha Gale

I agree. If they've actually got this super fantastic magical software (which I doubt) why can't they use it on any vista box?

What a crock of s***.

Mines the one with Zire72 in the pocket.

[VampyreWolf]

Harmful items?

Better pull all the pens, pens, paper products (papercut... 20lbs book across the side of the head... ), rulers... hell, pull all footwear because someone might get kicked. Better make it everything, I might choke on my clothing.

[Geoffrey Summerhayes]

Oh, c'mon Reg

April Fool's was yesterday, you can't really expect us to believe a story like this...

[Tom]

How about invisibility..

Forget your swords and MS stuff... does anyone remember the stories about the auctions someone was putting out to become invisible. They let those go through several times!

In fact I just checked and they are still up!!!

http://cgi.ebay.com/BECOME-INVISIBLE-walk-UNSEEN-among-people-or-CROWDS_W0QQitemZ130208722188QQihZ003QQcategoryZ1468QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

If thats not dangerous I don't know what is!!

Argggg our sanity be under siege me maties!

[John Sykes]

Harmful or just plain banned...

Last year I decided to sell on E-bay a 28" (yes, 710mm) cigar, which had previously lain in state in a tobacconist's window for half a decade. It was pulled: not because it was a tobacco product (banned unless packaging unopened), but because it was a Havana cigar...... so they do have idiotic rules and they do apply them with a charming lack of discretion.

[Paul]

Harmful laptop

"Short of blowing up in your face, how the hell can a laptop "harm" someone?"

I wouldn't much fancy dropping my substantial old Dell i8200 on my toe. That would hurt, man! Might even be enough to break a bone or two.

[Gordon Fecyk]

@Paul Hamm: "New Terrorist WMD of choice"

"The mighty and all pwr4ul compromised MS Vista laptop. Rich, really, honestly, no kidding, they use em, you better watch out, Lions and Tigers and Lappies OH MYYYYYYYYY!"

Ya, and seven years ago Osama Bin Laden could destroy American infrastructures with a laptop computer and a 56k modem.

http://www.vmyths.com/column/1/2001/10/16/

eBay needs a sanity check. They especially need to take their Turbo Lister 2 off their site, because it causes harm or the potential for harm:

http://www.antiwindowscatalog.com/?mode=product&id=113

"obviously the only thing allowed on ebay should be linux then."

Sorry, but Linux does harm to one's sanity trying to config it, write some shell scripts, check your version dependencies, compile your libraries, patch your kernel, maybe do that once or twice...

According to eBay's rules, that makes Linux products unlistable. I better take my Snapgear router off the block, then.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Paul Hamm & @Gordon Fecyk

"How does this apply to eBay? What jurisdiction does Germany have over eBay?"

Every country has jurisdiction after Ebay rolled over to France who insisted they were going to so many euros per day because it was allowing nazi memorabilia to be sold.

If ebay had any sense (or balls) they would have pointed out France had 2 choices:

1) Cut their users off ebay, or

2) Pay lots of cash for ebay to put a system in place to stop Fenchies accessing any auctions selling nazi stuff.

It reminded me of the nanny-state attitude we have today where anyone that is offended has right to demand the person offending them stop doing so immediately & feel a bit guilty.

To people that believe in that shit, I have one to say:

I am offended at you being offended.

Hah, put that in your pipe & smoke it!

"Ask any vet that lost a body part just how massively destruct an ak-47 or m16 is."

I think I may not be getting this...do you live in a country where people are in the habit of taking pot-shots at the local cats with big guns?

[Kevin Reader]

Odd that - they let a dodgy car ad run for nearly a week

Not so long ago a used saab dealer had one of his cars listed on ebay by someone else. You could tell as they a) reused his photos b) still included his hedge in the photos and c) it had the same registration plate. Over nearly a week of contact from him, me (and maybe others) ebay failed to respond and failed to end that auction.

They did however warn me off for warning about the vehicle in their own forums and/or using the 'fraud' word near their hallowed site!

One might almost suspect that someone with more clout than most got them to pull the laptop listing.

[Slaine]

forbid sales of items that might do harm...

erm... I see today a "27inch samuri cutting sword", a "115mm angle grinder", a "550watt hammer drill", a selection of "ouija boards", "ceiling fans" and "nail polish" (don't drink it). No sign of a pot and black kettle ensemble.