[Gllug] Uh oh, govt attempting to regulate "hacking"

[Richard Jones]

On Tue, Mar 07, 2006 at 09:25:25PM +0000, Adrian McMenamin wrote:
> Not to me. It seems to make it illegal to put nmap on your website and
> say "use this to crack someone's security".
> 
> I think there are some flaws in the Computer Misuse Act but I think this
> provision - which makes the distribution of rootkits illegal - is not
> one of them

Don't get me wrong here - I'd really like to see a strong law which
explictly mentions online extortion and fraud in the same breath as
going to prison for a very long time with an overfriendly cellmate
called bubba.  It'd be nice if it also acknowledged that much of this
crime comes at us from overseas and set up ways to coordinate with
foreign police forces.

Preventing people from distributing semi-legit tools like nmap, and
illegit tools like rootkits -- well, not preventing them because
they'll be distributed anyway -- is just security through obscurity.
I have _no worries_ whatsoever about sites in Russia offering Linux
worms and rootkits to the world, since those toolkits can then be
analysed and whatever bugs they're exploiting can be fixed.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, CTO Merjis Ltd.
Merjis - web marketing and technology - http://merjis.com
Team Notepad - intranets and extranets for business - http://team-notepad.com
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