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Publishing Exploit Code Ruled Illegal In France
Dexter writes "A French Court has condemned the security researcher Guillame Tena for publishing a security vulnerability in the Viguard anti-virus software of Tegam. This ruling makes the publication of security vulnerabilities and their proof of concept through reverse engneering illegal in France."
What good is it to publish software vulnerability, especially on closed source products?
If one really wants to help, isn't it better to inform the software maker? If the latter couldn't care less, maybe one shouldn't care more?
However, as the friendly article pointed out, the fine was for a copyright infringement charge, so it looks like you can still publish a vulnerability as long as it is subtle enough.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
What about Tegam? They published the exploit in every copy of Viguard. While telling everyone it would protect them. Why aren't they guilty? What kind of crappy lawyer lets their client get punished for telling the truth about dangerous products?
--
make install -not war
I'm sure just to spite France President Bush will make it mandatory for all programmers to post exploits.
IF instr(HEADLINE, "FRANCE") > 0 THEN
PONDER_FRENCH_MATTERING
LAUGH("FRANCE")
ELSE
READ_ARTICLE
END IF
It's VB (SCREW YOU FOR JUDGING ME!)
You may notice the article has no details.
I did a Google News Search and found this one which is much better.
Also, the guys own website.
Hope this helps.
- Jax
Well, let's see, they provided weapons, military training and aid to the American Colonists in the Revolutionary War. They developed the most heavily armored and gunned tanks during the early German Blitz, one French Char B1-Bis held up an entire German Division for an entire day. One little short frenchie with a bad attitude almost conquered the entire world, twice.
:))
They've developed nuclear weapons, were one of the original founders of the European Union, who's Euro continues to dominate the American Dollar. They were one of the first modern countries to pick on the buzzword "Democracy" long before a bunch of colonists got pissed at their King's latest tax law.
Oh, did I mention numerous American, Australian and British courts have upheld the same reverse engineering proof of concept rulings?
You Sir, are an uneducated bigot.
(Note: I am not anti-American, I'm just hitting him where it hurts.
I did read the article and the link in it to a previous article. The previous article stated that his exploit code was judged to be an illegal copy of Teagam's (or whatever their name is) code. I'm not sure exactly where you are getting the idea that his antivirus copy was not legitimate, but this conclusion does not seem to be supported by the articles.
There are top notch security experts in France, specifically the folks at K-Otik http://www.k-otik.com/
I'm a security consultant and I look to these folks as a source of reputable information. I spent a LOT of time on their site when Microsoft was trying to deal with the fallout of the MSO3-026 vulnerability which begat the MSBlaster worm. I even got the source code for blaster from the K-Otik crew.
This is going to have huge ramifications if it is interpreted as described here.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Richard Stallmann has written a text about a future scenario, where owning debuggers is forbidden. It's recomended reading, and at least has showed me why we have to fight for our rights! The Right To Read also carries a informational part, which is non-ficitional, and highly interesting reading. Both parts is here
Assembling etherkillers for fun an profit
There used to be a great geocities-like free web space provider called altern.org.
.phtml. I actually only began mucking around with PHP and server-side scripting because altern.org offered it. I still cook up some solutions with PHP and MySQL -- something that'd never have happened without mr. Valentin Lacambre's Flying Circus.
I say geocities-like so you get the picture, but it was nothing like geocities. No nonsense interface -- all text, no pictures, no ads --, great webmail interface -- again, all text, no pictures, no ads. It was also the first (maybe the last, I just got my own paid hosting when it got ultracheap -- it wasn't, in the day) free web space provider to support PHP.
Yes, PHP. In the days where extensions were
Apparently, the whole thing was ran by a techno-anarchist who prophecized in the future technology would make working unnecessary yadda yadda yadda. A sort of techno-optimist Guy Debord.
One day, one of altern.org's free websites had a parody of a France Telecom logo. Tartalacrem, if I'm not wrong. Legal hell ensued.
Not only it wasn't covered under any kind of fair use provisions, but France Telecom sued VALENTIN LACAMBRE, THE GUY WHO RAN THE FREE SERVICE.
Courts rejected his defense of not being responsible for everything hosted in his server as anyone could anonymously host content. Mr. Lacambre was forced to pay up fines and was told he was still responsible for anything held in altern.org.
So altern.org was taken down. That's France, folks.
Sorry, but the source here is a Blog post, which in turn refers to the convicted guy's home page.
Nowhere does it say what, exactly the guy was convicted of, or why. So how are we possibly supposed to be able to react to this?
I have a hard time accepting statements like:
This ruling can cripple the security research in France, making it illegal to publish security vulnerabilities or the proof thereof by reverse engineering. Without being able to tamper software the actually studying and consequent publication of vulnerabilities is made impossible.
Without seeing the judgement or at least a description of it from a neutral source.
Reverse engineering is legal in Europe, and is a protected right under European law. (91/250/EEC, article 6.)
I have a strong feeling the whole story is not being given here.
In this case an appeal to the European Court on grounds of effective suppression of fair comment sounds as though it might just be possible if funds were somehow made available. It seems on the fac of it obvious that the real reason for the case was a corporation trying to prevent any adverse publicity and using its superior economic power to get the decision it wanted, but it will need expensive experienced judges to point out what seems obvious to the majority of people.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
It has always annoys me when people say a ruling makes something illegal. Rulings don't make something illegal. Laws make things illegal. Rulings just enforce those laws. So either it was already illegal in the law or the court overstepped their bounds. Happens all the time here in the states. The courts say something is illegal and we just blithely go on about our business never once questioning whether they have the right to create law or not.
If you see spelling or grammatical errors don't blame me. I tried to preview but IE here at work borked the CSS
Tegam refutes his claims...
and
Tegam is adamant that Tena's claims are false and his motives are questionable.
BTW, was it already illegal in France to do what he did? If so, then the people should get the laws changed, not trash the judeges and judicial system for doing their jobs by upholding them...
Let's say you are a mechanic, and you find an problem with a particular brand of car that could cause it to explode when, say, it was hit from behind.
Let's say you tell the automotive manufacturer about it, and he claims that your research was flawed and there was no problem, or he just says "ok we'll look at it" and does nothing for four years.
Let's say that, after those four years, you start reading stories of people dying "mysterious" in explosions during crashes in those cars. You tell the vendor again, but again they deny that their problem is causing the deaths, and they even deny that you contacted them about the problem four years before.
Do you continue to keep quiet, and let people die because telling the public about the problem would be "unprofessional"?
Would you have told the public after giving the manufacturer a month to find a fix, so everyone would know about the problem and could participate in the recall?
Would you have told the public as soon as you found the problem, so people could choose to not use the car while a fix was being designed?
What do YOU think is the professional thing to do?
It doesn't hurt to be nice.