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Comment by therein

6 days ago

I wouldn't call that stealing. It is a forced refund. A hacker could even justify it to himself that these people were unknowingly paying for a shitty product that was built like Swiss cheese, time to give them a refund. Another plausible one is "this guy shouldn't be allowed to run a website, I can't believe he made money for it, it is going back".

I am not saying it is the most likely case or even ethically justified but it is definitely not a super unlikely one. Anyone who thinks that's an impossible scenario has not been in the hacker's shoes.

> I wouldn't call that stealing. It is a forced refund.

If someone took money out of your pocket would you call it stealing? What if they gave it to someone else, like a past employer or your parents or a humanitarian organization?

By the way, you should check a dictionary. The definition of "stealing" is literally taking something away without permission.

  • Being in the possession of a password or key implies having permission to use that key. When generating a key you give everyone with access to that key the permission to use it to perform actions on your account.

    Protect your keys.

    • > Being in the possession of a password or key implies having permission to use that key

      So if I get your house key I can use your bathroom?

      Seriously, what hill are you trying to die on here?

      5 replies →

Refund or chargeback? The processing fees for a chargeback on every transaction could put him out of business.

He's lucky they didn't find a way to use it for card washing.

  • It would have had to be refund. The hacker could t initiate a chargeback from knowing the merchant's stripe keys. Seriously doubt it was a competitor. The risks of hiring someone to commit felons against your competitors just isn't worth it. Especially since the vibe coder seems to be bungling things on their own just fine.

  • How about you pay more attention to the story? It's not Visa/MasterCard or the customers that got hacked.

> I wouldn't call that stealing. It is a forced refund.

Respectfully, what the hell are you talking about?

Imagine you work 40 hours making an app and I pay you for those 40 hours. A third party comes in and says, I'm forcing a refund here - you lose the money you made, but you get the app you made.

How do you feel about this forced refund?

>I wouldn't call that stealing. It is a forced refund.

Can you name an instance of stealing that could not be described as a forced refund?