AI agent hacks gym to get its user a spot in pilates class

In a legal sense any unwanted intrusion can be considered hacking - i.e. a 'hack' is not contingent on penetrating authorization. In practice most APIs are secured by obscurity rather than any high quality rigorous authorization. The only thing it would make absolutely clear at a legal level is that you do not want the API to be publicly used, but for a jury/judge accessing an unadvertised API via browser tools is hacking.

The term is insufficiently defined and has overloaded meaning.

In the original sense of the word, i.e. creative use of technology? Debatable, and most techies would probably land on the "no" side of the debate.

Is it illegal? Depends on the jurisdiction and is up to a judge, but it probably falls under unauthorized modification of computer systems, so here the answer is probably "yes". IANAL, but lack of authorization mechanism is probably not a valid defense. AFAIK lawyers and judges do not follow the law to the letter independent of real world experience, so you can probably argue that if the UI didn't provide a way to cancel other people's appointments, then any reasonable person should realize it wasn't intended for public use and thus refrain from doing it. (Corollary: LLMs are not reasonable persons.) Just like an unlocked house door isn't an invitation to come in, you have to assume it was done accidentally (may depend on customs of the location, but where I come from it's pretty obvious).

Is it morally acceptable? Pretty clearly no. Even if it wasn't illegal, it's a jerk move.

Yes, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is widely criticised for making almost any act a violation (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030) including many things that many people do on a routine basis, such as accessing a non-public API. If it was not intended to be accessed and is accessed, then the perpetrator of the crime has met the "exceeds authorized access" clause.

> (a) Whoever

> (2) intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains—

> (C) information from any protected computer;

> (6) the term “exceeds authorized access” means to access a computer with authorization and to use such access to obtain or alter information in the computer that the accesser is not entitled so to obtain or alter;

A "protected computer" is:

> (B) which is used in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce or communication, including a computer located outside the United States that is used in a manner that affects interstate or foreign commerce or communication of the United States

So this is a Pilates computer, which probably is used by a business which probably conducts interstate commerce, which probably makes it a protected computer, and the API gave "information".

So, yes.

If you leave your front door open I don’t think you’d classifying someone walking in and taking your laptop as ‘not stealing’.

At least one person has received significant jail time for doing exactly that: https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/new-york-man-sentenced-41...

It's not straightforward: the conviction was eventually vacated (without really addressing the substantive point), and it is possible that the US authorities went particularly heavy in this case for other reasons.

But yes, attacking an unauthenticated API has previously met the threshold for conviction.

My gym class operates on 'write on a piece of paper, cross off your name if you want to cancel'. I could cross someone else's name off and write mine in. They would have trouble figuring out it was me who did the malicious cross-off.

That wouldn't make it remotely acceptable of course.

It's being used unintentionally to do things it wasn't designed to do... isn't that hacking by definition? Missing Auth is a typical finding.

Practically speaking, discovering that fact and taking advantage of it, is already "hacking".

The more interesting question is rather: who is responsible? The user who set-up Claw, the LLM provider?

If you ask a software developer: no

If you ask a judge: probably yes

But someone could get offended! So no. But with LLMs, it's becoming easy to make such app for your own use, tuned to the encouragement style and threshold that works best for you.