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

The well is poisoned.

[argent]

More than a quarter of a century ago I inadvertently found a hole in a UNIX based bulletin board system, went in and fixed the code, called the operator to tell him what I'd done and how to fix the rest of the problems, and ended up with a series of contracts.

A few years later I wouldn't have considered it. People who'd not done much more had spent time in court and been threatened with jail. Not much later, you had people actually doing jail time for simply "knocking on doors".

What happened?

The whole "ethical intruder" meme had spread, and people had started cracking into systems and then claiming they were just "rattling doorknobs" to "help security". Of course you couldn't tell an "ethical hacker" from a crook, and the crooks could claim they were just trying to help.

It's the "ethical hackers" themselves that have made it impossible for this kind of activity to be condoned.

Re:The well is poisoned.

[Xugumad]

I think also, as systems stop being maintained by one person, and are covered by a group, it has become a lot less easy to simply go "Ah, they meant well, I'll just ignore it". Instead, the entire group has to come to a decision, and no-one wants to be seen as lazy at maintaining security.

I've seen a student here report a security hole (the muppet that originally developed the web app they were using tracked currently logged in user by putting their username in the CGI parameters. Change the name, and you can be whoever you want), and some members of staff still wanted to seem the kicked out (we did manage to talk some sense into them, though). Point is, if it had just gone to the person maintaining the system at the time (me), I'd have patched up the code, thanked them, and forgotten about it.

Too often companies ignore problems until it's....

[Anonymous Coward]

.... too late. It doesn't even have to be a real security issue. It can be something as simple as good security practices. Here are ideas I would recommend e-mail providers, for example, to implement.

Dual passwords. A master password which can change anything in the account, and a secondary password which can change anything but the master password. The idea is that if your secondary password is stolen, you clean your machine (just incase you were infected), log in with your master password, change your secondary password, and everything is fine.

Freezing expired accounts for 10 year periods to prevent someone from grabbing it up and gaining mail-forgotten-password privledges from other sites. Got a bank account? Got online banking? Got an account which you can easily send your password to your e-mail address? Oh wait! Your e-mail address expired! Someone else registered it, went to a bunch of bank websites and such, just to see if your former e-mail address has an account there.

Article summary - rewritten...

[jkrise]

Hackers, worms, and viruses are good for network security ("Security Software firms such as Symantec) and that the law and public policy should encourage 'beneficial' hacking (Legislation must ensure we keep such firms running). From the article: 'Exploitation of security holes prompts users and vendors to close those holes (Makes people believe that such defects are inevitable, and can only be solved by continuous updates) , vendors to emphasize security in system development, and users to adopt improved security practices. This constant strengthening of security (reliance on vendors for updates) reduces the likelihood of a catastrophic attack -- one that would threaten national or even global security (any negative impact on suspect business practices OR bottom-lines)

Makes sense now, don't you think?

Lawmakers out of touch

[pubjames]

I think this raises a fundamental issue - most of our lawmakers and enforcers are people who have not grown up with these new technologies and have little understanding of them, both from a technology point of view, but also their social context.

Most judges, seeing a bank had implented very poor physical security - so poor that a lone teenager could fairly easily get into the bank without help - would be lenient on the teenager for breaking into that bank and bank would be in lots of legal trouble for having lax security. But when the internet is involved the teenager becomes an evil hacker in the eyes of both our lawmakers and much of society, and it's off to jail for the teen and no punishment for the bank.

I really worry about the next generation. All kids do stupid stuff and talk about stupid things as they are growing up. Only now, much of that stupid talk is done via electronic communications, and much of the stupid stuff is easier to trace.

I can see in the near future (maybe it's happening already?) that when a misdemeanour with a youth occurs one of the first steps a law enforcer will take will be to get access to the youths electronic communications. Then they'll uncover all kinds of stuff that will look terrible in the eyes of a law enforcer and the parents - and be extremely embarrassing or worrying for the youth. But in reality will just be the stupid things people do and say when they are growing up. We'll have youngers going to jail and being ostracized by their parents and society just for doing and saying the stupid things that we all did when we were young.

Re:For those who won't RTFA

[arivanov]

Well...

Realistically this is the history repeating itself. Many times.

Prior to Edward Jenner discovering the vaccination the people tried to instill immunity to Smallpox in their children by a process known as variolation. The difference from vaccination was that people were deliberately infecting children with the real virus hoping that they have it in a milder form. Well... and if not, that was just a child, one more, one less who cares. In some more awkward and less developed parts of the world this is still done with Varicella, and less frequent Rubella, Measles and Mumps.

Society attitudes have changed since. The majority no longer consideres normal to infect children with the real viruses. Still, even now, there are idiots who insist that "having child diseases is good for the children as it improves their character" (or other such bollocks).

Similarly, infecting networks with real worms is not dissimilar to variolation. There are plenty of security tools out there nowdays which can detect the vulnerabilities that can be used by the worm and force the user to fix them. There is no real need to weed out the "weak" (yeah, I know, I am tempted myself to weed out the idiotz sometimes).

And as far as jo average user it will take some time for them to grow up, but it will end up the same as with vaccination. People were reluctant to do it initially. That is not the case now.