‘Hacker’ helps Excite@Home toughen defenses

CNET: “The company shored up its online defenses after a hacker pointed out a vulnerability in April that
allowed access to the company’s internal network and exposed nearly 3 million support records to
the public.

The company praised the hacker–known by the alias “Adrien Lamo”–for coming forward after
he poked around their network. Despite the open-source movement underscoring the historic definition of hackers as curious–if
unconventional–researchers, companies have been frequently leery of associating with anyone
who considers themselves one.”