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Clean Needles for Hackers

Posted by michael on from the prophylactic dept.

scubacuda writes "Jon Lasser of the Register opines that we should "give up on the notion that computer security can be improved by putting more people in prison." He argues that a "harm reduction" approach (similar to that of "clean needle" campaign in the War on Drugs) might be more productive. If we, say, wrote in safer programming languages, used tools like Immunix's StackGuard, ProPolice, or OpenBSD 3.3, chroot and UML, we could reduce the damage a malicious hacker might do without damaging our civil liberities."

2 of 285 comments (clear)

  1. Fix the UML link... by xchino · · Score: 3, Informative

    They are talking about User Mode Linux, not Unified Markup Language. How ridiculous.

    --
    Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
  2. That's not what this is... by Millennium · · Score: 5, Informative

    This isn't about letting hackers go free. It's about making systems more secure without having to violate civil liberties by enforcing draconian security measures.

    Or, to put it another way, alleviating a symptom (rampant hacking) of a problem (programs with security holes) by actually solving the problem (using safer programming methods to close the security holes) while still punishing those who continue to try to hack, who, with these lower-level holes closed, will have to resort to higher-visibility methods where they are easy to catch using ethical (i.e. strictly-reactive) methods of law enforcement, rather than violating the rights of 10,000 innocent people for the sake of catching a single wrongdoer.