Well, the German anti-hacker law is making its first victims. The KisMAC project has been discontinued:There has not been a lot of time for KisMAC lately. However the motivation for this drastic step lies somewhere different. German laws change and are being adapted for "better" protection against something politicians obviously do not understand. It will become illegal to develop, use or even posses KisMAC in this banana republic (backgound: the change of § 202c StGB).
The site Phoenolit also had to move to outside Germany. Tools are not outbanned black or white. Security professionals can use them but much of the wording of the text is very vague and the people in Germany are not taking risks. Experts warned the politicians about the negative impact but they choose to ignore it. I happened to browse over to the site of CCC.de and saw it displayed an image before entering their site (see below).
While I cannot do much about that for now, you probably can. Make copies of KisMAC and its source as long as the website is up! Do further development outside of Germany, even better outside the US and EU! If you are a German resident, you will need to fight for your rights.
It gave me a big smile. I will try to translate it but my German is basic. I take no responsibility for errors.
With the changed law, the German Government changed the internet back into a flower meadow. Since there are no more security problems, we don't need any security tools anymore.
Should you see any security issues on your systems, it's only an illusion. For more information, please contact the department of Justice.
Hacking (cracking!) was already illegal. Outlawing security tools only hurts the security community. GSMs (cellular phones) can be used as remote detonators. Why don't we outlaw them? Because their benefit is greater then the possible misuse. Let's hope that things will change for the better.
Sunday
German law vs Security Tools: The fallout
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Security4all Blog
Twitter
Slideshare
Facebook
Digg
Flickr
1 comments:
This reminds me of the controversy in the United States over gun control. Opponents say "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns". Same premise pretty much applies here. If the security tools we use to audit and lockdown our networks are taken away from us, we become inherently more insecure. Meanwhile, the Bad Guys will continue to utilize them. What do they care about another law? The end result of hacking is already illegal (accessing another network without permission, stealing, changing or removing data, etc.) Will this have any impact for good for the overall security posture of the Internet? I think not. Unfortunately the reverse will be the result. Let's hope this doesn't become a trend, and the good der Mensch of the German government come to their senses and revoke this law.
Post a Comment