I've been following the recent conversation about the tip posted by a blogger on how to "trick" the search stats on coldfusionbloggers.org. Many people are upset about the fact that this was posted, but I think we should look at this another way.
I have personally spoken with the blogger who made the original post, and it was not intended to be a malicious act at all. He has great respect for Ray Camden, as do I. It was simply meant to educate people about potential security risks with Ajax. We're not talking about publicly showing people how to take down a site. It's just search statistics.
I'll agree that it was probably an error in judgement to put this out there, but it doesn't deserve the public flogging that is being delivered. Many of the comments posted on the Web Biz blog were so nasty that the author decided to take the blog down until this passes over. "Mean people suck." Well, the people who are responding to this seem much more harsh than the original act was.
In reality, would you rather have someone on your development team who has the knowledge and skill to point out issues like this, or would you rather have someone who moves along blissfully unaware of major security flaws in their applications?
These things happen. It is important to share security concerns for the good of the community. I am sure all of this will blow over soon.
DW