First sentence. You don’t have to have stolen the password, if you login to another account, and someone proves you did, you can be charged if they want to pursue it.
In a legal context, hacking is a term for utilizing an unconventional or illicit means to gain unauthorized access to a digital device, computer system, or network.
We can rule out “illicit” because the FBI published the data publicly. Now the heavy lifting has to be done by “unconventional”, which I don’t think qualifies here. A government agency published the credentials, which means no one had to do social engineering, sneak into an office, reverse engineer anything, or even guess a person’s birthday.
Now if this somehow went to court, a judge might rule that this qualifies as hacking, but my opinion is that it doesn’t.
Or having the FBI leak your password and you using it without authorization. Legally it 100% falls under hacking in the USA.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/hacking
First sentence. You don’t have to have stolen the password, if you login to another account, and someone proves you did, you can be charged if they want to pursue it.
We can rule out “illicit” because the FBI published the data publicly. Now the heavy lifting has to be done by “unconventional”, which I don’t think qualifies here. A government agency published the credentials, which means no one had to do social engineering, sneak into an office, reverse engineer anything, or even guess a person’s birthday.
Now if this somehow went to court, a judge might rule that this qualifies as hacking, but my opinion is that it doesn’t.