Analysis Of Symantec's Stance On Censorship

robochan writes "According to this report in the Sydney Morning Herald, Chief Operating Officer of Symantec, John Schwarz, was quoted as 'calling for laws to make it a criminal offense to share information and tools online which could be used by malicious hackers and virus writers.' This article takes a look at the negative affects and also a couple of recent examples of "censorship legislation" backed by the COO of Symantec, and what little effect it has had on criminals, while having a substantial affect on responsible citizens."

Comments

A clarification

[Chairboy]

An important clarification from an article on this subject a few days ago:

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/09/12/106326 85 53158.html

Asked whether Schwarz would like to clarify whether he had really meant that full disclosure should be legislated against, Symantec's Asia-Pacific public relations group manager Lindy Yarnold did not directly deal with the query but said: "Symantec fully supports information sharing on threats and vulnerabilities and believes it is an important tool for consumers and IT professionals to gain a measure of early warning of potential attacks."

A reply from Symantec on Bugtraq

[biftek]

From this thread on Sept 12 (love the slow Australian IT press):

I am posting this In reference to the recent Wired article which Richard Smith posted to this list. Symantec fully supports information sharing on threats and vulnerabilities and believes it is an important tool for consumers and IT professionals to gain a measure of early warning of potential attacks.

The Bugtraq mailing list, maintained as an independent entity under the SecurityFocus brand, remains one of the most respected and open sources for security information and early alerting by security professionals worldwide and full disclosure is *critical to the integrity of the Bugtraq community*.

With regards to cyber crime we need more and higher quality resources for law enforcement to work on computer forensics, and we need cooperation from government and industry to assist prosecutors in building cases against attackers.

Given the increase in the number of security threats and the availability of online tools we also believe that the industry should focus on training and educating todaya(TM)s youth about the ethics of computer crime and its affects and impact on victims.

These are not simply my words but also an official Symantec statement.

Cheers,
-al

Alfred Huger
Senior Director Engineering
Symantec Security Response