thoughtcrumbs

For those of you with your heads under a blogging rock all weekend (or at least ensconced in snipers and senators), Blogger was hacked on Friday. Someone exploited a Linux networking flaw and changed users' publishing passwords to "hacx0redbyme". Thus, for about an hour on Friday morning, if you knew someone's Blogger username, you could post to his or her site using that password. The Blogger engineers (all one or two of them) quickly brought the servers down, repaired the problem, and apologized. While it turns out people's server usernames and passwords were never in jeopardy, the fear and anger caused by the hack led to some furious discussions, such as the one at Anil Dash.

Much more interesting to me than the hack itself is the articulate and passionate debate at Anil's site by various well-knowns in the blogging community. In particular, Evan Williams, Blogger's C.E.O., defended his product thoughtfully and concisely, even, given the tremendous pressure he must have been feeling. With dozens of Blogger users questioning and complaining, he explained the problem and later even laughed at his own "publicity stunt." Jason Kottke and Dave Winer, both technocenti themselves, made fervent arguments against Blogger and its engineers' seeming shoddiness at security, given the software's popularity with the lemur-like masses who trust their passwords in a centralized server. Their contributions were less cogent than Evan's because their anger clearly overpowered their argument. The entire debate was a litany of fucks ("fuck cool new features, how about some security," "most third-party weblog setups are fuct," "we fucked up."), but I think Blogger will still come out ahead, for its leader's competence and rationality in a time of crisis. Anil also deserves praise for diligent and intelligent moderation throughout.