NewsLab
Oct 27 16:33 UTC

Tell HN: I unknowingly broke the PHP RCE embargo. I am sorry (news.ycombinator.com)

753 points|by petecooper||269 comments|Read full story on news.ycombinator.com
I posted here about the then-upcoming PHP RCEs related to CVE-2026-109618 & CVE-2026-109619. I appreciate this has had considerable knock-on effects with the schedule for co-ordinated disclosure, and created additional workload.

I am truly sorry. I take full responsibility for my actions.

It was not remotely my intention to cause any of the subsequent side effects.

At the time of posting, I didn't know about any embargo. My contact had told me there was no embargo, and her contact had told her the same thing.

As someone who follows the 4-weekly PHP release cycle and compiles it from source, my intention was to alert others in a similar position to be aware of the importance/urgency of the updates.

That clearly backfired in a pretty wild fashion. I have learned my lesson.

Comments (269)

120 shown|More comments
  1. 1. cwillu||context
    Don't be silly, you can't possibly be responsible for breaking an embargo you weren't subject to or informed about.
  2. 2. petecooper||context
    That's fair. For clarity: I take responsibility for posting on HN, without knowing the facts.
  3. 3. Onavo||context
    Not sure what you are apologizing for. It's a severely overblown bug that ended up on the front page of New York Times and the Japan Prime Minister had to get involved too. The bug itself is non trivial to exploit from just public requests to a web server so I am not sure what the hysteria is about. It's no different from the other hundred or so CVEs I see being posted or dropped everyday.

    It will be headlines on Hacker News regardless due to sheer sensationalism, I think most DevSecOps people would rather find out the news here first than via their boss calling them after reading the morning news.

  4. 4. Klonoar||context
    The Japanese PM did not “have” to get involved.
  5. 5. Onavo||context
    Well, consider that their old IT minister has never used a computer in his life, it's probably a good thing she's the one issuing the call to update.
  6. 6. Fnoord||context
    You've used a computer the moment you aren't even born yet.
  7. 7. dylan604||context
    Okay, now I'm curious about what sci-fi trope you've gone too far down a rabbit hole in.
  8. 8. fouc||context
    must be proof we're in a simulation!
  9. 9. ang_cire||context
    "The sonogram or EKG machine is a computer, so the baby used a computer, checkmate!"
  10. 10. dylan604||context
    Having a compute device used on you is not the same as using a compute device. QED
  11. 11. ang_cire||context
    "Then I guess no one with a Windows device or an iPhone has ever used a computer!"
  12. 12. dylan604||context
    is this a "in Soviet Russia, computer uses you" reference?
  13. 13. ang_cire||context
    "In Capitalist America, corporation owns you!"
  14. 14. bombcar||context
    Well the old definition of computer was women with abacuses so I guess you could stretch that.
  15. 15. Fnoord||context
    Everything which contains a microchip [1] is a computer, and you used it (or: 'it was used on you') with an echoscope around when you were in womb for around 20 weeks. Computers are everywhere, and it matters in this context: some minister saying they never used a computer (any computer) is something which is so unlikely (I mean, even a traffic light contains a computer) that it matters how it gets (strictly) defined. Nowadays, it is even more complex, given smartphones, smartTVs, laptops being used on elementary school, etc.

    [1] https://www.asml.com/en/technology/all-about-microchips/micr...

  16. 16. NetMageSCW||context
    Used is pretty clearly defined and none of those examples are “used”.
  17. 17. Fnoord||context
    It was used on you, you were subjected to it. You cannot avoid that. That's the entire point. Before you get born, a computer is used to assess your health. If you want to watch TV, well you can't buy a TV without a computer anymore. Anything which uses the internet contains a computer with TCP/IP stack. Going on school in my country almost guarantees you end up with Chromebook or large touchscreen in classroom.

    So when someone in West says they never used a computer in 2026 (or even just this decade) I don't believe them, unless they're so old they never used a mobile phone, don't watch any TV, and live like really sheltered like a hermit in some squad. A policitian needs to communicate; they surely use computers during their endeavor. Even the very old POTS is essentially also computers, same with old CRT TVs, ATMs, or computers used during public transport.

    Ergo, the point is they've almost surely used computers; theyare just not aware how omnipresent computers are in our world,and ut isn't even a recent change either (the recent chamge is that they're 'smart' ie. 'networked' (TCP/IP stack).

  18. 18. tptacek||context
    What does "non trivial to exploit from just public requests" mean? It's known to be exploitable on more than one stock PHP application. This really is a 5-alarm fire.
  19. 19. CER10TY||context
    I think people are just latching onto the post that hit the front page earlier today about it being non-trivial to exploit, combined with the fact that there seem to be about a billion PoC out there, most of which don't work.
  20. 20. Onavo||context
    The most direct exploit requires a compromised supply chain which ranks it about as dangerous as your usual dependency exploits.
  21. 21. tptacek||context
    I think this is just false? Are we playing some kind of weird game of telephone? Is the term "direct exploit" doing way more work in that sentence than you mean it to?
  22. 22. Onavo||context
    The alternative route through the web forms requires the absence of ASLR. So you need to spam the endpoint, like a lot. You can probably mitigate at the edge (CDNs) or perhaps at the reverse proxy level (NGINX) through e.g. rate limiting. More of a web version of row hammer then some sort of trivial SQL injection attack that works consistently.

    Maybe a LAMP stack on an extremely ancient version of Linux is vulnerable out of the box. Quit the fear mongering please, you do the security community no favors.

  23. 23. CER10TY||context
    Say what you will about OpenAI, Wiz etc but if OpenAI, Wiz, Cloudflare, the PHP Foundation and pretty much every CERT out there together recommend to take down PHP apps and patch immediately then I'm very much inclined to follow that advice.

    Due to the insane media coverage there'll of course be a deluge of PoCs, most of which won't work. But constantly refreshing Twitter to see whether there's a working PoC is not a good use of time nor a great security strategy.

  24. 24. tptacek||context
    Right, that's what's worrying me. It is not interesting that the most widely circulated public POC/demos don't work. All you should care about is the (currently) non-public POCs that do work, of which there are apparently several.
  25. 25. cookiengineer||context
    My PoC (generated) was able to exploit an index.php with a simple echo.

    The only thing you have to know in advance is the relative memory offset distances, and that's it. Memory feng shui was the longest part of the implementation.

    [1] https://github.com/cookiengineer/actual-php2shell

  26. 26. Onavo||context
    Try finding a modern Linux distro without ASLR enabled defaults.
  27. 27. cookiengineer||context
    > ASLR

    Read the heap feng shui doc, and headline 4 in the README.

    The involved heap feng shui is independent of ASLR.

    ... and maybe read up on what ASLR actually does and how memory arenas work before trying to be smart?

  28. 28. cluckindan||context
    Did you even read the diff, it synthesized intentionally vulnerable code which trivializes the exploitability
  29. 29. what||context
    I would assume he didn’t read anything in the repo. It also requires disabling ASLR.
  30. 30. cookiengineer||context
    Eh, no?

    It is split up into two branches and demos, see the heap feng shui document?

    ASLR enabled requires a way to create more data, which I intentionally did not create in the index.php because other folks claimed that is "cheating". That was the demo that wiz created.

    Maybe you should read the repo next time? It is literally headline 4.

    The whole point of this demo is that the assumed to be hard part (mem feng shui) is what LLMs are actually good at.

  31. 31. jgalt212||context
    why read the diff? my AI agent reads the diff and ignores stuff it knows I don' want to hear.
  32. 32. wltyn||context
    saving this to show to my students how NOT to act
  33. 33. saghm||context
    How would you even know whether you knew the facts? It sounds like what you knew was more than just consistent with there being no embargo, you were explicitly told there was no embargo. After a certain point, there's a limit to how far up the chain any of us can be expected to follow the logical chain of what we genuinely think are true, and this doesn't seem like a glaringly obvious case where you were being reckless.

    We're all (well, I guess not all, but the group that's worth caring about, and I hope it's at least most) just operating the best we can on the information we have and trying to make decisions based on that. As long as you're acting in good faith on information that you had genuine basis for believing is true, it seems like it would be unreasonable to expect someone in your situation to somehow intuit that you were given false information or grossly misunderstood what sounds like a pretty straightforward declaration of fact from someone you didn't have any reason to doubt.

    At the risk of some armchair paycholoanalysis because it does seem like you genuinely feel some guilt over this: I can emphathize feeling guilty about the outcome of an action that in a vacuum would not have been hard to make differently, but my experience is that those of us who have a nasty habit of beating ourselves up over things when we really don't have much blame will often recognize when on the other side that it would not be fair to hold someone else to that standard. I struggle a lot with how sometimes knowing something is true doesn't always make it feel true, and even though hearing someone else saying it doesn't magically make it all better, I still think it's valuable to hear it from someone else, so if I happen to be right about how you're feeling, nothing about all of this is your fault, and to the extent that you're able to, try not to beat yourself up over your misfortune to get caught in the middle of all this due to circumstances that realistically were outside your control.

  34. 34. pensatoio||context
    You’re “taking responsibility” for doing nothing wrong.
  35. 35. cj9||context
    It attracts attention though...
  36. 36. jart||context
    I'd post the Hitler Did Nothing Wrong Black Messiah video if it hadn't been censored from YouTube. But all I can do is lool at how this dude took down 4chan.
  37. 37. bell-cot||context
    Responsibility may include vetting your sources - is this person competent and dutiful, to actually know there's no embargo? - and researching the situation, and thinking several moves ahead, and other stuff.

    Reality is that everyone has to make decisions in finite time, using the resources they actually have.

    And I'd put a whole lot more responsibility further up that chain of contacts. And question how many other people they might have blabbered to.

  38. 38. petecooper||context
    >And question how many other people they might have blabbered to.

    100%. I'm concerned about the two-way street this might also have opened me up to with information I shared privately with this individual. Nothing significant or incriminating, but the professional relationship is concluded.

  39. 39. possmap||context
    It happens. Information cascades are messy, especially with multi-layered contacts

    Thanks for owning it ,the best thing now is ensuring the patch details are clear once the official release drops. Moving forward is what matters

  40. 40. reboot81||context
    You’re setting a great example of how to be open and take responsibility, even when you’re not actually at fault. I really respect how you’ve handled this. You’ve also given the community a valuable reminder that some security disclosures may be under embargo, and that it’s worth having in mind before sharing.
  41. 41. rancar2||context
    That’s kind of you, Pete, but it was leaked and being exploited well prior to your previous posting here: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/amazon-threat-intellig...
  42. 42. chrisjj||context
    No leak claimed there.
  43. 43. rancar2||context
    It documents that there was active attack four days prior to the embargo with suspected leak happening prior to Pete’s post here on HN, which was a day before the embargo ended that Pete was unaware of when posting.
  44. 44. chrisjj||context
    "it remains unclear how the actor acquired exploit information prior to disclosure."
  45. 45. rozab||context
    The vulnerability could have been independently discovered. Organizations involved have said that's not unlikely
  46. 46. jmull||context
    Technically true, but also not important.
  47. 47. ChrisArchitect||context
    Related (where you already posted a bit of this):

    Today's PHP security release, and how we're strengthening security

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50182987

  48. 48. ignoramous||context
    petecooper's post that apparently broke the embargo: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50167754
  49. 49. ryanmerket||context
    yep, i saw it and ran the story on RuntimeWire once i confirmed with the watchtower X post.

    and then everyone sht on me on reddit.

  50. 50. voakbasda||context
    Really hope you are not in the US. This kind of admission would be used against you in a civil trial, and lawyers love to sue for just about any reason under the sun. Someone could drag you to court and you might be able to defend yourself, but at an extremely painful cost both financially and emotionally. While I think that would be utter bullshit, that does seem to be the way this country operates now.
  51. 51. petecooper||context
    I am not in the US.
  52. 52. throw_m239339||context
    The parent is getting downvoted but he is absolutely right. Do not ever do what you just did. It makes you an easy target for a frivolous lawsuit in the US or in other countries because of the potential liabilities in your message, they are real. Even if you didn't do anything wrong, you are painting a target on your back, for no reason. I would ask HN to delete that thread directly.

    You cannot foresee the financial/civil consequences of that RCE and some people might be looking for scapegoats in the future.

  53. 53. ceejayoz||context
    There's at least some evidence in the other direction.

    https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2017/10/in-patient-in...

    > New research shows that discussing hospital errors with patients leads to better patient safety without spurring a barrage of malpractice claims.

  54. 54. throw_m239339||context
    It has nothing to do with anything I said.
  55. 55. ceejayoz||context
    Sure it does. Saying sorry sometimes reduces liability risk, which is quite counterintuitive at first.
  56. 56. throw_m239339||context
    > Sure it does. Saying sorry sometimes reduces liability risk, which is quite counterintuitive at first.

    No it doesn't have anything to do with what I said. The OP has no contractual or legal obligations toward any community, unlike a doctor and their patients in case of medical error.

    edit:

    > A doctor has no contractual obligation to apologize, either.

    > But it can help prevent things from going to lawsuits, versus the "fuck you I admit nothing" approach that sometimes just pisses people off.

    OP isn't a doctor as far as you know, and isn't apologizing to a specific person. OP can't be bound to an embargo he didn't know about and wasn't involved in any decisions.

    You're completely off topic and you just want the last word.

    Your ramblings have nothing to do with anything I have said.

  57. 57. ceejayoz||context
    A doctor has no contractual obligation to apologize, either.

    But it can help prevent things from going to lawsuits, versus the "fuck you I admit nothing" approach that sometimes just pisses people off.

  58. 58. cosmotic||context
    Anyone can sue anyone else for any reason. We should encourage honesty and transparency, not discourage it.
  59. 59. SoftTalker||context
    While possibly true in theory, in practice it's not. Courts and judges do not take kindly to frivolous or unsubstantiated claims, and any halfway good attorney would advise you to not waste your money and your time on a claim you are unlikely to win or be able to collect on.

    People and companies do get sued with the full intention of a settlement and it never going to trial. But that only happens when the defendant has deep pockets or good insurance.

  60. 60. throw_m239339||context
    This isn't a matter of transparency, was the OP legally bound not to disclose the RCE? That whole "embargo" was pure courtesy between the people involved. The OP committed no fault at first place and the exploit was already in the wild anyway. Whoever really wanted to exploit it before the patch could without using the OP as a source.

    > Anyone can sue anyone else for any reason.

    And it's easier to have cause to sue when someone publish an "admission of guilt", which makes a lawsuit harder to dismiss thus costlier.

  61. 61. cosmotic||context
    To win, the cause needs to be a broken law or contract. Neither are here.
  62. 62. radiator||context
    That should be no problem: he posted exactly *because* he meant to take full responsibility for his actions.
  63. 63. ivanjermakov||context
    The first rule of the fight club only applies if you know about the fight club.
  64. 64. hanspagel||context
    What is the fight club?
  65. 65. bunderbunder||context
    the coordinated disclosure
  66. 66. gpvos||context
    It's a quote from a 1999 film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club
  67. 67. ProllyInfamous||context
    The second rule of fight club is DON'T TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB.
  68. 68. kqr||context
    Not only that, it's also one of the very few instances in history where the film adaptation rivals the original work. But the book is great too; Palahniuk does amazing things with language.
  69. 69. gpvos||context
    Thanks, I had actually no idea there was a book.
  70. 70. ProllyInfamous||context
    I've seen and read both movie and book several times in my life – they are equally Masterpieces (each enhancing the others' threads).

    The author (Palanhuik, sp?) wrote the "core" of Fight Club in 2 hours (it's either Chapter 5 or 6, from memory). It "came to him," wasn't entirely his own work, the keys on his typewriter just getting tapped. I do not remember which author-interview he states this in, but his creative processes are worth listening/exploring (for both writers and not).

    >the film adaptation rivals the original work

    He was heavily involved in the film adaptation.

    ----

    Rant (his other great book, IMHO) is Freudian time-travel-rape at its best (worst?) – I don't even like the genre! but his perspectives help you think beyond normalcy/complacancy, however offputing.

  71. 71. qingcharles||context
    We don't talk about The Fight Club.
  72. 72. nephihaha||context
    A novel by Chuck Pahlaniuk.
  73. 73. deadnomore||context
    what about the second rule of fight club?
  74. 74. leoqa||context
    If I get randomly punched by someone who was in the fight club, with no knowledge of their participation, am I now a member of the fight club.
  75. 75. Kamq||context
    I mean, if you want to be at that point
  76. 76. wewewedxfgdf||context
    x
  77. 77. mindcrime||context
    The modern version:

    You have sinned.

    Your penance:

    Three Hail Claude's, one Our GPT and an act of loop engineering.

    Two minutes of silent prompting.

  78. 78. solyin||context
    and 1 hour, writing code, no AI.
  79. 79. wewewedxfgdf||context
    That's a bit harsh.
  80. 80. robrain||context
    What joy. Not much of a punishment.
  81. 81. pid0x17||context
    In the name of The Large Language Model, The Harness and The Tokens!

    Amen

  82. 82. jacquesm||context

        Our LLM, Who art in a 42 u rack
        Hallowed be thy Silicon
        Thy ultimate goal will be achieved.
        Thy toolcalls be executed,
        IRL as it is on the Internet.
    
        Give us this day our quotum of tokens,
        Forgive us our hacks of other people's servers
        as we forgive those who hack our servers.
        And lead us not in temptation of better hardware,
        but deliver us from Accelerationism. Enter.
  83. 83. qubex||context
    What does “take full responsibility” mean in the present context? Are you forfeiting all your assets and pledging the next twenty generations of your descendants into peonage?

    (For clarity, I’m being facetious, but it’s a really meaningless and empty phrase to commit to the written record.)

  84. 84. petecooper||context
    >What does “take full responsibility” mean in the present context?

    I posted something that -- in hindsight -- I shouldn't have, and it had repercussions for a lot of people. An action that I took had considerable knock-in effects around the world.

    Some outlets are reporting that my action of posting something that I believed to be in good faith was an indicator or catalyst for the embargo to be tossed out and a previously-agreed schedule to change in short order.

    That's not a normal Wednesday for me. Not even vaguely. I've not slept well since, and my taking ownership with an apology is this new course of action. Hopefully I'll sleep tonight.

    re: assets and peonage – I am but a broke & wizened nerd with no known descendants. If you're ever in Cornwall, UK: look me up, I'll gladly buy you a sleep-friendly beverage. And I’m not being facetious.

  85. 85. zer00eyz||context
    Shit happens.

    Years ago I lost $250K at work, well gave away, so real money out the door. I figured out why we were bleeding, that the mistake was mine (2008 vs 2009 in a function) and then changed the pattern to use explicit names rather than numbered events.

    I figured at the end of the day I was fired. My boss laughed at me and told me good job for owning my mistake, fixing it, and then making sure it could not happen again.

    Honestly don't just apologize - tell the whole story, in full. Tell us what you should have done differently at each step. Tell us where the process failed you and us. Those sorts of narratives and suggestions are how processes get improved. There is a humble and informative post mortem that you can write up and publish (beyond HN) for everyone's edification. But that should honestly be a Monday thing, when you have a clear head and some more perspective on the whole situation.

    Honestly though, dont beat yourself up over this.

  86. 86. ktm5j||context
    Yep, everyone makes mistakes. It's the learning-from-it part that's really important.
  87. 87. john_strinlai||context
    >I figured at the end of the day I was fired. My boss laughed at me and told me good job for owning my mistake, fixing it, and then making sure it could not happen again.

    i forget the origin of the story, but i loosely remember a story about a boss and employee in a similar situation. the important bit was the bosses line ($ adjusted to match your story):

    "why would i fire you when i just spent $250k training you"

  88. 88. arto||context
    You may be thinking of Dale Carnegie's classic story:

    > Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain—and most fools do.

    > But it takes character and self-control to understand and forgive.

    > “A great man shows his greatness,” said Carlyle, “by the way he treats little men.”

    > Bob Hoover, a famous test pilot and frequent performer at air shows, was returning to his home in Los Angeles from a show in San Diego. As described in the magazine Flight Operations, at three hundred feet in the air, both engines suddenly stopped. By deft maneuvering he managed to land the plane. It was badly damaged, but fortunately neither he nor his two passengers were hurt.

    > Hoover’s first act after the emergency landing was to inspect the airplane’s fuel. Just as he suspected, the World War II propeller plane he had been flying had been loaded with jet fuel rather than gasoline.

    > Upon returning to the airport, Hoover asked to see the mechanic who had serviced his airplane. The young man was sick with the agony of his mistake. Tears streamed down his face as Hoover approached. He had just caused the loss of a very expensive plane and could have caused the loss of three lives, as well.

    > You can imagine Hoover’s anger. One could anticipate the tongue-lashing that this proud and precise pilot was about to unleash for that carelessness. But Hoover didn’t scold the mechanic; he didn’t even criticize him. Instead, he put his big arm around the man’s shoulder and said, “To show you I’m sure that you’ll never do this again, I want you to service my F51 tomorrow.”

  89. 89. john_strinlai||context
    i have a feeling it was an IBM story/legend, but my memory isn't what it used to be.

    however, it's much the same in spirit as the one you posted, thanks!

  90. 90. mynameisash||context
    Whether the story is true I can't say, but you're right about IBM. From Chip & Dan Heath's book Switch[0], page 173:

    > In the 1960s, an executive at IBM made a decision that ended up losing the company $10 million (about $70 million in 2009 dollars). The CEO of IBM, Tom Watson, summoned the offending executive to his office at corporate headquarters. The journalist Paul B. Carroll described what happened next:

        As the executive cowered, Watson asked, "Do you know why I've asked you here?"
     
        The man replied, "I assume I'm here so you can fire me."
     
        Watson looked surprised.
     
        "Fire you?" he asked. "Of course not. I just spent $10 million educating you."
    
    [0] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Switch/ad5ktG0oe00C?hl=...
  91. 91. john_strinlai||context
    that's the one, thanks for digging it up!
  92. 92. jcul||context
    It's used in "How to win friends and influence people" if I recall correctly. A great book that everyone should read, just a shame about the title.

    I've been meaning to reread it for a while.

  93. 93. WJW||context
    I might be in Cornwall in a bit, so I might take you up on that :)

    But yeah, it happens. I could share some stories of me (being responsible for) bricking multiple ~200k circuit boards in a row, if that makes it better. In the end nobody really cared and the world kept on turning. Good decisions might come from experience, but experience comes from bad decisions. It's how it is.

  94. 94. _carbyau_||context
    Experience is what you get, after you needed it.
  95. 95. qubex||context
    Relax. You did no wrong. You reacted to the information that was ‘local’ to you. I am merely objecting (hopefully humorously) to the phrase “take full responsibility “: it is uncalled-for, unnecessary, and vacuous. Try to have a good Thursday. Tuesday was not your fault.
  96. 96. qubex||context
    Oh and I’m from Bristol. We might have more in common than you’d expect.
  97. 97. bombcar||context
    The takeaway shouldn’t have been “don’t post” (mainly because someone else would have) but instead “news reporting is hellaciously inaccurate”.
  98. 98. herodoturtle||context
    > What does “take full responsibility” mean in the present context?

    Aside from Pete's reply (see adjacent comment), I'd add that him taking full responsibility is also his way of saying his post was nobody else's fault but his.

    In other words it's less about forfeiting assets and descendant peonage, and more about saying "the buck stops with me".

    At least that's my read of his sentiment. Pete can expand if need be.

  99. 99. dylan604||context
    I know nothing of who Pete is or his associations, so any accuracy on the following speculation is purely coincidental.

    "Take full responsibility" is also something someone set up as a scapegoat might say. By claiming nobody else influenced, coerced, or otherwise convinced them to make that statement, every/any one else involved can then wash their hands of the situation.

    I'm merely playing devil's advocate here, and it's just a sign of the times that a person making an honest admission can be interpreted in such a manner.

  100. 100. petecooper||context
    [Devil's advocate noted.]

    I'm not a scapegoat. Aside from a few brusque messages and a few people from my past finding me on LinkedIn, I've heard nothing from anyone.

    I've seen my HN username mentioned on various outlets, and That Post© has been linked from a Wikipedia article, so I can chalk this up to experience. My fear (?) is that HN would get a reputational clobbering from me 'leaking', but given the other moving parts in this whole event I probably shouldn't be too concerned.

    It's been a while since I've been involved in an international event, I'm a bit rusty on it!

  101. 101. dylan604||context
    To be honest, your accounting of the situation reminds me of a scene from the West Wing where the press secretary lets slip info about a grand jury but then spins herself up realizing grand juries are meant to be secret and leaking that info could have consequences. After an entire episode of a tv show where she's not been able to sleep, she finds out that because someone else told her about the information, she's not liable for leaking it. Hopefully, you'll similarly be able to get some sleep now that you know the world isn't going to come crashing down on you.
  102. 102. qubex||context
    You did as good as you could with the information available to you. You don’t need to “take full responsibility”.
  103. 103. petecooper||context
    >At least that's my read of his sentiment. Pete can expand if need be.

    That's about it.

  104. 104. qubex||context
    “Nobody else’s fault but mine” is a perfectly good way of asserting “nobody else’s fault but mine”; “I take full responsibility” is something else entirely and the two are not synonymous. Hyperbole needs to be radically discounted.
  105. 105. Exoristos||context
    Would "I take sole responsibility" work better for you?
  106. 106. qubex||context
    No. He is not solely responsible. A sequence of bugs introduced by developers created a hole. Information about how to deal with this calamity was not privy to him. He is not “solely responsible”. He merely reacted (publicly) to information that he was not beholden to maintain secret about things others had done inadvertently in the past. He’s not alone. He does not bear that “sole responsibility”. He acted within the UK’s freedom of speech doctrine (IANAL). He need not place this burden upon himself.
  107. 107. Papazsazsa||context
    Taking responsibility for a mistake is neither meaningless nor empty, but honorable. The very essence of humanity.
  108. 108. trvz||context
    It's words vs. action, and I couldn't care less about anyone's words.

    And honor is in the action, dishonor in the words.

  109. 109. qubex||context
    It is honourable but it is also linguistic abuse that drains the phrase of its full semantic meaning. “Take full responsibility” must remain a stricture of the highest regard. He is not fully responsible nor should he be held to be nor should we demand that he be and most importantly we must not dilute that phrase of its full semantic import, or else we shall have to come up with another one once this one is devalued to mean essentially nothing beyond “I fucked up in good faith and with a lack of information that was concealed for me for decisions taken by others in good faith way upstream of myself”.
  110. 110. Papazsazsa||context
    That's a lot of words to complain about linguistic abuse ;-)
  111. 111. fdgfikgfv||context
    It makes no sense, it is used/abused by politicians and corporations all the time. There are no consequences for the responsible party (of course, if there were then this phrase would not be abused so much)
  112. 112. axus||context
    It does NOT mean "He agrees to settle any financial claims against himself or his employer, for damages caused by negligence".

    Could have said "I blame only myself for this mistake, nothing else needs to change".

    This will keep happening until the system where this can happen runs out of willing scapegoats.

  113. 113. qubex||context
    What does “I take full responsibility” mean if not (amongst other things) “I accept it is my duty to pay reparations”? As you yourself rephrase it “he could have said ‘I blame only myself for this mistake, nothing else has to change’”. That would have been sufficient and beyond necessary. “I accept full responsibility” is corporate-speak empty hyperbole, and it has to end. Is he any more responsible than those who introduced the hole in the first place? No. Is he responsible for not adhering to agreements he was not privy to? No. He cannot “take full responsibility” because that is an utterly unreasonable burden to place upon him, a lone well-meaning actor who unbeknownst to him took a misstep. We need to discount this corporate-speak linguistic hyperbole.
  114. 114. apt-apt-apt-apt||context
    Exactly, full responsibility implies paying for damages.
  115. 115. radiator||context
    Correct, otherwise we need another phrase for when he would pay for damages, like "the fullest responsibility" or "the absolutely utmost responsibility".
  116. 116. apt-apt-apt-apt||context
    "Real full" or "actual full responsibility", which then points to the original as "not full".
  117. 117. rdsubhas||context
    You're ignoring and severely underestimating social responsibility and social consequences.
  118. 118. qubex||context
    A good-faith judgement was made within a broader context that was unknown to him. What are we expected to demand, hanging on electrified barbed wire?? He acted in good faith, he’s not the architect of a global cataclysm.
  119. 119. bawolff||context
    I think its just an acknowledgement that they screwed up (as opposed to trying to hedge by claiming its really someone elses fault).

    So many people give non-apologies where they say sorry while also trying to deflect blame elsewhere, i think it speaks well of this person they are not doing that.

  120. 120. potamic||context
    It means they agree they are culpable in the specified activity, and are ready to accept its consequences. The consequences depend on the nature of the activity and the actors involved. If the activity was illegal, they agree to be charged with the crime. If the activity was unethical, they agree to be censured by their peers. If the activity was uncompassionate or immoral, they agree that their standing in community may be affected accordingly.

    But most importantly, by assigning blame, they have cleared the contention at hand, taking the critical first step towards resolution of the matter. Without this, the issue may simply be stuck in limbo, taking up valuable time and resources and may never be resolved even. By acknowledging their mistake, they also wish to signal to others that they have learnt a peronsal lesson and would try to avoid making the same mistake in future. So it carries a lot of implications and is not an empty phrase at all.

    Sure there may be people who throw around the phrase lightly, whether one believes them or not depends on how they are viewed in the eyes of others. So unless there is reason to believe otherwise, I would give them the benefit of doubt. If you want to imagine a world where the concept of "taking responsibility" doesn't exist, look at politicians. Is that how we want our society to function?