Over on the Make: blog Bre alerts us that Germany has passed a vague anti-hacking law that outlaws the good with the bad. As he says:
Today in Germany the Hacker Tool Law goes into effect. With the official name of Paragraph 202C, it states that it is illegal to possess, use, produce, or distribute a “hacker tool”.
In theory, law enforcement could come and arrest everyone here at Chaos Communications Camp. A group of hackers gathered in solidarity to protest this law. Hackers in Germany have been protesting the making of this law for the past year and are stunned that it passed and has gone into effect.
Over on ZDNet Ryan Naraine writes about the effects already seen in the German tech industry:
Security professionals in Germany have started removing exploits and hacking tools from the Internet in response to a new German law that expressly forbids the distribution of any software that can be used in computer/network attacks.
Stefan Esser (left), the PHP security guru behind the recent Month of PHP Bugs project, has yanked all the proof-of-concept exploits from the project page because of legal concerns related to the new law.
“This new law renders the creation and distribution of software illegal that could be used by someone to break into a computer system or could be used to prepare a break in. This includes port scanners like nmap, security scanners like nessus and of course proof of concept exploits,” Esser explained.
(Photo Credit: Bre)