Immunizing the Internet

jonny4001 writes "The Harvard Law Review has published a student-written article that argues that hackers, worms, and viruses are good for network security and that the law and public policy should encourage 'beneficial' hacking. From the article: 'Exploitation of security holes prompts users and vendors to close those holes, vendors to emphasize security in system development, and users to adopt improved security practices. This constant strengthening of security reduces the likelihood of a catastrophic attack -- one that would threaten national or even global security [...] Current federal law, however, does not properly value such strategic goals.'"

Comments

Does this work for offline crime?

[amelith]

So bank robbery is good for their security and should be encouraged? Everyone who moves to a new city should be immediately mugged so they can learn valuable lessons about personal security? Perhaps there should be an official quota of licensed murders so people don't get too lax about their own safety?

What is the special magic about technology that makes people give opposite answers to "Is X sensible?" and "Is X sensible using a computer?" for just about all values of X?

Ame

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing...

[trims]

The paper (or article, or whatever) is actually quite well-nuanced and fairly even-handed. However, it suffers from a fatal flaw of many legal articles: a fundamental ignorance of the subject matter itself.

It's a paper written by (wannabe) lawyers, who, while they site large rafts of supposedly corroberating papers and "experts", don't understand what they (the exports and sited papers) are talking about.

This kind of approach is eminently practical (and effective) when attempting to try a case, or negotiate a settlement. However, it is absolutely the wrong way to do things when attempting to write a Public Policy piece. If one is attempting to educate the populance (or some subsection of it) about an issue, you have to actually understand the subject, not just quote others' ideas.

They are correct in the supposition that cybercrime has a different nature than that of "real world" crime. But they completely misunderstand how this difference affects people.

A classic example of not really understanding the subject matter occurs when they claim that a compromised system actually causes very little economic damage, as the system itself is not physically damaged, and the effort to repair it is theoretically comparable to a periodic security audit/update of the machine. What they perceive is a JoyRide in a "stolen" car - someone took my car out for a whirl, and if they've returned it in good shape, all I (the owner) have to do is sweep out a few of the crumbs (and maybe fix the door lock) before it is ready to go again. This isn't the true case. Rather, it is closer to the case that I, the owner, would have to completely dissassemble the entire car, and put it back together again from its component parts, just to make sure that the kids didn't screw something up (or wire a bomb to the ignition). There is a HUGE economic cost to cleaning up after even a minor intrusion. Because, frankly, there is no way to determine if something was a minor or a major intrusion, until a complete postmortem is done. And the risk associated with keeping a compromised system working is far too great to NOT do the full rebuild. In many ways, the risk analysis looks a lot like empidemiology: when a herd of cows is found to contain one case of Mad Cow, we kill the entire herd and check them all, rather than just kill the sick cow, and say "oh, we found the problem, and it is fixed now".

The real solution is not to allow "ethical hackers", but rather to provide economic incentives for companies to protect their data. If this were the case, then companies would take security seriously, and there would be a whole thriving sector of legal security probing companies (which exists in a very tiny manner today). If companies were held to multimillion dollar fines every time private data was compromised, you could be damned well sure that security would rank somewhere above "oh, and empty the trash before you leave tonight", which is where it currently resides. And security checks would be done by true professionals, complete with after-incident reports and improvement suggestions.

-Erik