15 Minutes of Fame and a Lawsuit
There is probably an analogy to the "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction" law of physics in information security. Take the case of the MIT researchers who found vulnerabilities in one of the Boston mass transit's systems. They publicized their finding on the Web with offers to ride for free for life. I could have hung a sign on my back saying "Sue me" and not elicited the same response these guys got.
The short version of the story is that a court has issued an injunction preventing a presentation of their findings at DefCon and the Boston mass transit authority is suing the authors and, for good measure, MIT. In the end, other security researchers don't get to learn from this example and the researchers will spend valuable time on legal issues that could have been avoided.
Offering to tell the world how to steal from someone else is not a good way to generate a legal maelstrom, not advance security research.
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