Weev repetitively accessed information that he knew he was not authorized to access on a server owned by someone else.
These researchers took a phone they owned and setup a situation where a server they controlled sent messages the phone interpreted as coming from Apple. Those messages were used to extract the key from the phone they owned. They then used that key to access an account they owned and were the authorized user of.
Is there a technical case of unauthorized access if they used a non Apple client to access the photo? Maybe. Did they establish the same pattern as Weev, accessing information related to many other users? No.
> Weev repetitively accessed information that he knew he was not authorized to access on a server owned by someone else.
Not to mention giving the hack to Gawker before notifying AT&T, getting caught with cocaine, violating a gag order, and saying "I won't nearly be as nice next time" shortly before his sentencing.
All largely irrelevant to the issue that no real crime was committed. In any rational world, there has to be some difficulty to a hack before it is a "hack".
No locks were broken - not even the weakest 1bit password. Weev only incremented a number of a public endpoint.
The prosecution in his case, as in Aaron Swartz's, conspired to use their legal enforcement powers to intimidate the innocent. They literally, knowingly, tried to charge people for things they knew at the time weren't crimes, because they had been "humiliated" by losing earlier.
(*Innocent of the charges at hand - questions of someone's "other" guilt are out of scope.)
These researchers took a phone they owned and setup a situation where a server they controlled sent messages the phone interpreted as coming from Apple. Those messages were used to extract the key from the phone they owned. They then used that key to access an account they owned and were the authorized user of.
Is there a technical case of unauthorized access if they used a non Apple client to access the photo? Maybe. Did they establish the same pattern as Weev, accessing information related to many other users? No.