On Tue, 28 Aug 2007, Jerome Athias wrote:
Hi,
it is important to notice this.
The mentioned german law comes after the similar french law called lcLEN (aka
Fontaines's law).
In 2003-2004, a petition was done against this law, with around 15,000
signatories...
http://www.iris.sgdg.org/actions/len/petition.html
for nothing...
"A new anti-security law was voted yesterday in France, this law called LEN
(loi pour la confiance dans l'économie numérique)":
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/359969
And after that we had the Guillermito's story
"Hacker Indicted In France For Publishing Exploits":
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/31/1543248
http://constitutionalcode.blogspot.com/2005/01/guillermito-reverse-engineering.html
Good luck to our neighbours from Deutschland...
I salute you!
I don't know of a good solution to stupid laws. My impulse is to
encourage security companies to boycott such governments. Don't sell (or
give) them products and services. (Tell them that you are afraid of
violating their laws. A valid concern.) Maybe they will get the hint
after the 42th successful hack/virus/whatever.
Of course, this will not work. As seen in the US, there are plenty of
people who will do anything for money, no matter who it hurts, including
themselves or the industry they work in.
The US has also gone after people revealing vulnerabilities. "Killing the
messenger" is a popular pasttime world wide.
/JA
Steven M. Christey a écrit :
The n.runs-SA-2007.027 advisory claims code execution through a UPX
file. This claim is inconsistent with the vendor's statement that
it's only a "theoretical" DoS:
http://www.sophos.com/support/knowledgebase/article/28407.html
"A corrupt UPX file causes the virus engine to crash and Sophos
Anti-Virus to return 'unrecoverable error. leading to scanning being
terminated. It should not be a security threat although repeated
files could cause a denial of service."
It is unfortunate that Germany's legal landscape prevents n.runs from
providing conclusive evidence of their claim. This directly affects
Sophos customers who want to know whether it's "just a DoS" or not.
Many in the research community know about n.runs and might believe
their claim, but the typical customer does not know who they are
(which is one reason why I think the Pwnies were a good idea). So,
many customers would be more likely to believe the vendor. If the
n.runs claim is true, then many customers might be less protected than
they would if German laws did not have the chilling effect they are
demonstrating.
It should be noted that in 2000, a veritable Who's Who of computer
security - including Bruce Schneier, Gene Spafford, Matt Bishop, Elias
Levy, Alan Paller, and other well-known security professionals -
published a statement of concern about the Council of Europe draft
treaty on Crime in Cyberspace, which I believe was the predecessor to
the legal changes that have been happening in Germany:
http://homes.cerias.purdue.edu/~spaf/coe/TREATY_LETTER.html
Amongst many other things, this letter said:
"Signatory states passing legislation to implement the treaty may
endanger the security of their computer systems, because computer
users in those countries will not be able to adequately protect
their computer systems... legislation that criminalizes security
software development, distribution, and use is counter to that goal,
as it would adversely impact security practitioners, researchers,
and educators."
If I recall correctly, we were assured by representatives that such an
outcome would not occur.
- Steve
--
Refrigerator Rule #1: If you don't remember when you bought it, Don't eat it.
