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

Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally telling the FBI slashdot said it was 'ok'.

Re:Finally!

[Crayon Kid]

Except it's not ok. Glorifying "hacking" (used loosely) makes it look cool and omnipresent and makes it accepted at some level. Stupid young kids see it as a desirable activity.

And claiming that a certain amount of malware going around helps security measures stay alert is silly. The analogy with living organisms and biological malware is way off. Computer malware doesn't thrive in the wild, mutating randomly. It is powered by misguided humans and by misguided blacklisting approaches to security.

Perpetuating the status quo only perpetuates those misconceptions. It doesn't prevent anything in particular. The reason nothing really big has hit .gov sites is not because they were "immunized" by constant exposure to a certain amount of malware. That's just stupid. They aren't usually hit because (a) they usually employ good security, in all its forms, and (b) because there's hasn't been a REALLY bad piece of malware to hit the fan just yet.

Some day somebody will write a worm that will finally do something really distructive, like spread for a year undetected and then format 75% of the world's HDD's on the same day. Then we'll actually see if real security and chastizing wannabe hackers would've perhaps been better than stupid theories, except it will be too late.

Wow! Who knew?

[Heavyporker]

Darwin operates perfectly online! Now all we need is to set up the digital version of the Darwin Awards. Now, granted, idiot users aren't permanently removed from the gene pools, but if they ram enough computers into the dirt, they'll be dirt-poor and thus unsuitable as mates, hence they won't reproduce. Right?

Re:Wow! Who knew?

[Tatarize]

It turns out while your a child, you will turn out better if you touch everything and pick your nose and eat your buggers.

In general being exposed to a lot of germs (typically harmless) trains up your immune system. buggers catch a lot of local bacteria and allows for exposure in a safe and weakened form.

-- Just because it's correct. Doesn't make you want to do it.

Re:Wow! Who knew?

[Joebert]

hence they won't reproduce

Don't bet on it.

Re:Wow! Who knew?

[Mark Hood]

Yeah, but you just try going around sneezing on babies....

Mark

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.

Re:The well is poisoned.

[vistic]

I'll have you know that Dr. Bunsen Honeydew is a very good coder!

Re:The well is poisoned.

[jaclu]

One problem is accountabilitty,

While I do agree with you, that a kid reporting an error and perhaps even a sugested solution, would be regarded as helpful and something of a "white-hat" on a private perspective

However one thing that has changed since the early eighties is that now there is usually quite a bit more money involved.

Now accountability is a big concern.

If that kid was into a system I admin, I must realize that even if he propably just is helpful, I still cant be sure, after all he was in there, where he shouldnt have been, who knows what he did and discover but not tell me about.

And thats what its all about, ne one side I have a complete stranger who claims that he has been in one of my systems, found a few bugs, and have a few suggestions, one the other side is that the only way to be sure of system integrity is to asume that the system is completely penetraded, and do a very expensive security checkup, to see how much damage that _could_ have occured.

If I trust the kid, and he happens to be a black-hat - poof - there goes my job

If he turns out to be a white-hat, well in that case he was nice and not much won for either me or my clients (since we have to do an expensive audit anyhow)

So I would asume he was a black-hat, cause if he wasnt, I havent lost much... Maybe synical, but thats how it works. /Jacob Lundqvist

Re:The well is poisoned.

[Dagmar d'Surreal]

Doing an expensive audit after an intrusion is the cost of not having enough security in the first place. If you got hacked, you got hacked. It's true that it doesn't matter whether or not anything else was done with respect to the follow-up audit.

Having someone come forward and say "you've got a rather specific problem that needs fixing and here's a way to maybe fix it" and then going and doing your damnedest to ruin their career and/or put that person in jail is simply needlessly shooting the messenger.

Having someone break into your network and steal all your company's secrets and go sell them to a competitor without you knowing about it is called "a complete @#$@% disaster" and is usually the end of your company.

Generally, I would want the first group to get to my company before the second group does, since there's a chance my job would actually remain afterwards.

Re:The well is poisoned.

[humungusfungus]

way to be sure of system integrity is to asume that the system is completely penetraded, and do a very expensive security checkup, to see how much damage that _could_ have occured.

Which, arguably, you should have done in the first place.

Re:The well is poisoned.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's like a jewel thief or bank robber claiming they were "just trying to help out" when relieving a bank or jewelry store of its goods. Breaking and entering is breaking and entering -- if you do not belong in a place and you enter that place without authorization, you're breaking the law.

In that case, using your metaphor, what happens to the person who walks by the jewelry store and calls the owner (or the authorities) to inform them that the door has been left open. In a real jewelry store, the owner will probably be very grateful that he was informed of this mistake. And even if he finds out some things were stolen you wouldn't be a major suspect. Why, becuase criminals aren't usually very helpful to those they've stolen from.

If you do exactly the same thing on the internet however, everyone immediately assumes the worst. The question a company which uses it's website to store sensitive information should ask itself is; If a well meaning person notices a flaw in passing (not becuase they are trying to crack it but becuase it was an extremely obvious, like the one in the GP), do they want that person to come forward and inform them of it, or should that person hide and ignore it so that he isn't considered a criminal and wait until an actual criminal comes along and uses the same vulnerability to steal billions from them?

(Shucks I've forgotten my password)

PDF WARNING!

[Maelwryth]

The link is directly to a .pdf file. This should link to the Google html cache.

Re:PDF WARNING!

[tomhudson]

Like a pdf isn't a royal PITA under linux + firefox? No wonder yu posted AC (/me currently running SuSE + Firefox, and avoiding pdf files whenever possible because they're still bloated).

Now back on topic, this is just SO fucked up logically:

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.'"

... try it under this scenario ...

bank robbers, home invaders, and carjackers are good for your personal security and that the law and public policy should encourage 'beneficial' thieving. From the article: 'Exploitation of security holes prompts users and vendors to arm themselves to the max, vendors to emphasize rapid deployment of total coverage fields of fire in system development, and users to adopt a "shoot first, ask later" mentality. This constant arms race 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.'"

If it isn't your system, don't be f*cking around with it, same as if its not your car, your home, or your other sh*t. Just because it's computers doesn't make it special all of a sudden, with a suspension of all the rules.

Yes, I know, servers are just responding to queries ... but there's a difference between entering through the front door where the welcome mat is, and the door is wide open, and the host is expecting you, and trying to break in through a rear window on the second floor.

For those who won't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure plenty won't click the link, so you are missing out on the great title that was left out of the summary:
IMMUNIZING THE INTERNET, OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE WORM

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.

Re:For those who won't RTFA

[Haertchen]

***Well... and if not, that was just a child, one more, one less who cares.***

Can you provide any sources for this statement? Every description I've ever seen of losing a child, even in the bad old days, was usually pretty painful. You probably have to exempt the usual psychopaths.

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

Re:Does this work for offline crime?

[KlaymenDK]

Might be a good idea, as long as you make the Robbers' Guild (wrong name I'm sure?) hand out receipts so nobody gets mugged more than three times a year. :)

Re:Does this work for offline crime?

[skiman1979]

Well all those crimes hurt people/corporations. "Ethical hacking" is capable of occurring without causing damages. If I find a hole in a system for a remote code execution exploit, run code that simply displays a console message on a server, then determine how to fix the hole and inform the system administrator, that seems harmless. It allows the admin to find out about the hole and fix it. Now if I were to run code that roots the box and turns it into a spam bot sending millions of spam emails out wasting large amounts of bandwidth, or code to steal company data, that's another story. Should I be penalized if I go to your house, find out how to break into it, and tell you what I found?

Re:Does this work for offline crime?

[evilviper]

So bank robbery is good for their security and should be encouraged?

This isn't the equivalent of bank robbery (nobody gets potentially harmed, and no real damage done). Rather, a far better example would be the instances of journalists repeatedly and successfully smuggling weapons through TSA security, onto commercial flights. Absolutely no real harm is done by it, and success leads to very important good things (increasing security where it is lacking).

The more they will find security holes, and make the system safer against the real threat, the truely malicious professionals. Of course, the analogy isn't perfect, but it's far closer than bank robbery and murder.

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?

Probably because of people like you... People who can't relate the computer world to the proper real-world equivalents, and therefore have a really warped and twisted misunderstanding of the computer world.

Re:Does this work for offline crime?

[Archtech]

Every time computer security is discussed, someone immediately trots out the "burglar" analogy. I have nothing against analogies - they are very useful for getting insight into unfamiliar situations - but every analogy has its limits. In this case, a burglar is someone whose only purpose is to steal property for his own gain. Some people who hack into computers have this motivation, but many do not.

This is where the analogy breaks down catastrophically. There is no simple, familiar motivation for anyone to try getting into a house as an intellectual exercise, or even as a challenge. Either the house is wide open - in which case it would be legal to enter in some jurisdictions, while in others the householder could legitimately shoot an intruder anyway - or it is secured, in which case any attempt to gain entry is almost certainly of a criminal nature.

Computers are different, in that trying to understand and improve on software mechanisms is a universal impulse among (good) programmers. Bill Gates, and many other people who came to be famous, hacked in his youth. The sainted Richard Feynman confessed openly to having made a hobby of getting into as many locked areas and safes as he could, while working on the Manhattan Project. He had absolutely no ill intentions, although he was well aware that the military bosses would be hard to convince of that. Incidentally, he told of a valuable spin-off, when a senior official left the project and his immense safe was found to be secured. No one had the combination, and they were thinking of explosives and thermic lances until Feynman came along and casually opened it.

Please don't accuse me of trying to excuse genuine criminals - I am the last person to do that. But do realize that many people who experiment with software do so from motives of genuine curiosity and intellectual challenge, which can be very useful if properly harnessed. And let's get over the crude physical analogy of "breaking into" a computer. A computer is a machine that executes instructions. When some sets of instructions are executed, the computer can display words, numbers, and pictures meaningful to humans, and accept human input through keyboards and other devices. A computer does not have a mind of any sort, and thus cannot be deceived, pleased, annoyed, or educated. Moreover, the idea of the computer as a structure or territory that could be broken into is simply an analogy that helps us to think about it; it does not correspond to anything real.

Re:Does this work for offline crime?

[swarsron]

The special thing is stupidity. Consider the things you see and hear about IT security in real life.
People taping their keys next to their door.
Banks where you just state a different name and get full access to the corresponding accounts.
People stating that they don't bother if other people can access everything in their house as long as they don't do anything that actually harms them ("i don't care if someone can read my mail")

I and probably everyone on slashdot know people who don't give a shit about IT security and if the only way to get them to care is a decent kick in the ass then so be it. A bank robbery now and then is good for *my* security because it keeps banks everywhere concerned about their security measures. Three years ago people laughed when i told them about the stuff they now experience and suddenly they care to take responsibility and secure their PC.

Re:Does this work for offline crime?

[PyroPenguin]

This is where the analogy breaks down catastrophically. There is no simple, familiar motivation for anyone to try getting into a house as an intellectual exercise, or even as a challenge. Either the house is wide open - in which case it would be legal to enter in some jurisdictions, while in others the householder could legitimately shoot an intruder anyway - or it is secured, in which case any attempt to gain entry is almost certainly of a criminal nature.

Slightly off-topic, but there is a quite funny program on The Discovery Channel called 'It Takes a Thief'. The premise is the same; a non threatening crime to show the victim where they need to improve their security.

"So how safe is your house? Enter It Takes a Thief, a unique new Discovery Channel series that offers viewers something they've never seen before: a home burglary performed by convicted former thieves that is taped as it happens, followed by a lesson in what steps to take to prevent such a violation from occurring again."

Re:Does this work for offline crime?

[egarland]

We already have laws that make stealing illegal, there's no reason for making doing it "with a computer" special. If you break into a computer and steal money, you stole money, go to jail.

If I break into a computer and play a prank that hurts no one, why should I be facing hard jail time where if I had just broken into a building and played a prank the police would probably not even bother tracking down who did it?

Somehow people in the technology world have gotten it in their heads that people being curious and testing boundries deserves ass pounding federal prison time. This is incredibly destructive to some of the most important qualities in people: curiosity, cleverness, inventiveness all get squashed by this concept of "if we didn't intend for you to be able to do something and you do, you're a criminal".

This is highly destructive to real network security, the kind of security where even if people want to do something you didn't intend them to do, they can't. We need to go back to making tinkering with interfaces provided to you legal. The rule should be, if you don't want me to be able to tinker with the interface, don't provide it to me.

If hacking is a crime only criminals will hack.

Taquila Sunrise

[Joebert]

How I learned to stop worrying & love the worm.

Looks like I found a new Taquila drinking buddy.

Re:Taquila Sunrise

[Joebert]

I'm drinking a bottle of rotted juice, with a worm in it, & you expect me to know how to spell 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.

Hey, it works for living creatures

[hapoo]

Keep someone in a clean room all their life and then one day let them out. With an immune system that has never had the chance to "practice" they guy wouldn't last a week. On the other hand its been proven that eating your own boogers will boost your immune system. Just extend the same logic to a network.

Re:Yeah...

[CRCulver]

If someone's tresspassing I'm going to shoot them anyway, regardless of whether they think they're teaching me a lesson.

Uh, before you start stocking up on ammunition, you might want to look at case law for people who have shot trespassers. Except for when the trespasser was threatening physical harm, those who shot them usually got indicted for murder. You can't shoot someone just because they are on your property, especially if they are hundreds or thousands of feet from any houses. The whole "Trespassers will be shot" sign meme doesn't really mean anything in court.

open source hacking

[joe 155]

does anyone know where you can get open source hacking tools to use against your own system? I would like to know if my password could stand up to a traditional brute force crack, or if it would be possible to use remote ssh login to get contol of my computer...

Re:open source hacking

[smoker2]

How about here ?

Re:Student from where ?

[OverlordQ]

Taking 2 seconds to view their hompages tells you this:

The Harvard Law Review is a student-run organization whose primary purpose is to publish a journal of legal scholarship. ... The organization is formally independent of the Harvard Law School.

What's with people being lazy? Or is it just an attempt at some karma whorage?

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?

Why Shouldn't it :-P

[sakahna]

Harry Harrison makes exacly this argument in his Stainless Steel Rat series. As long as no-one gets physically hurt, the banks pass on the loss to their insurers, the police have what to do, the media what to report, the general public is entertained and the money is put back into circulation. So in theory, "everybody benefits".

Of course, real-life doesn't work like that. Just look how every little imaginery threat is currently used by the PTBs to further clamp down on the innocent general public.

Re:Why Shouldn't it :-P

[Anonymous Coward]

"the banks pass on the loss to their insurers"

Yeah, because we all know that insurers are not part of the system at all; unlike the rest of us, they have access to magic money-making machines powered by pixie dust.

Re:Why Shouldn't it :-P

[badfish99]

No, it's trickle-down economics in action. The banks recover the cost from their customers, who are mostly rich businessmen. So some of the wealth of those rich people ends up having trickled down to the poor robbers. Isn't that how things are supposed to work?

The rich people were probably just going to donate their spare wealth to charity to help the poor: robbery saves them the trouble of having to do that, too. It's a win-win situation!

Good idea, but doesn't work out

[Opportunist]

The idea that finding a hole and reporting it leads to more security works in a "perfect" setup. Perfect in a sense that the one finding it reports it instead of abuses it, and the one informed about it fixes it instead of ignoring it.

The reality looks different.

In reality, people don't want to be bothered with this pesky thing called security. They want their machines to do the magic by themselves and not worry about it. So they created laws where it becomes illegal to even look for a security hole. Because, what you can't see isn't there.

Take you average user. Just enough smarts to turn on the PC, updating with an automatically generated and even transfered script is beyond their capabilities. When (not if, when) their computer is turned into a spamslugger, who will they blame? Themselves for not being able to keep their machines secure?

Keep on dreaming.

The laws are a reflection of the general unconsciousness. People don't want to be hacked, so it must not be done. Yes, the machines are insecure, yes, there are billions of trojans and viruses out there trying to break in (and succeeding, most of the time), but as long as we don't see them, they're not there.

La la la, I can't hear you...

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.

What is the special magic about technology

[Animaether]

Imagine if this was the so-manieth discussion about music or video copyright infringement. Now ask again: "What is the special magic about technology". I think you'll find your answer.

I don't agree with it, for what it's worth, in either case.

oh, there should be penalties

[m874t232]

They should be against companies running buggy or insecure servers and end up exposing customer data or causing hassles to their customers.

As for "hackers", they should be held responsible under existing fraud laws if they commit fraud; the mere act of "breaking into" a computer system should not be a violation of law.

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

Re:A little knowledge is a dangerous thing...

[floWing]

You seem to be the only one to mention this problem: on most systems, an intrusion means that you need to completely reset (at least) the invaded machine. Quite often, although, also possibly compromised passwords, authentication files, etc. must also be reset on a global scale.

This measure of loss is overinclusive, however, because much of the cost of restoring system integrity is money that one should reasonably expect users to spend anyway. Whenever security flaws are discovered, users spend time and money to patch them, regardless of whether their systems have been attacked. Yet these same costs, when borne by the actual victim of a breach, count as losses under the current Guidelines even when the hacked system suffers no damage. It is as if a mere trespasser who entered a doorway with no lock were held liable for the cost of installing a lock afterwards.

So this statement indicates that a patch is as expensive as restoring a system? And as others mentioned, this shows how people love to create real-world examples about things those simply do not work in the IT world that way.

Finally, as discussed above, an attack's benefits generally correlate with its novelty. Exploitation of a known security hole usually offers little benefit beyond raising awareness. A novel attack, however, reveals much more valuable information that could preempt a more damaging surprise attack. Therefore, a redesigned system might punish attacks that are novel more lightly, and punish attacks that are not novel more harshly.

Great, any real intruders, who will most likely not rely on old exploits, get less punishment. Nice perspective: hack a few systems, do nothing obvious but set up a backdoor allowing another attack to be even more untraceable, and claim you are a "benevolent hacker". Therefore, you are getting less (or no?) punishment (and possibly making the victims prone to leave the system[s] unchanged apart from patching what you do not care about any longer), and finally complete the real crime later. Great concepts in this work, really. But he (they?) should have asked some security guys first, I guess.

Honest, officer, I was just checking the doors

[davmoo]

So to use this same idea, y'all have no problem if I discover your back door to your house is unlocked and I come in just to look around and make sure there are no other 'security issues', right? I promise I won't steal or damage anything, I just want to look around...

Sorry, it don't work that way, and just because computers are computers doesn't make it any different. If you want to come in to my computer and inspect, I expect you to ask, just like I would for my house.

When Microsoft is caught sniffing around anyone's computer without permission, even if they don't damage or alter anything, everyone here wants Bill Gates' head on a pike for public display and criminal charges against Microsoft. But if its a white-hat hacker, that's okay, and we should have the law allow them in. Funny how that works.

Parallels in Biological Systems

[D.A. Zollinger]

From another perspective, the author's ideas have some merit. In biological systems, it is only after one has been infected and their immune system fights off a disease that they are impervious to repeat infections. In this way entire societies build up resistances to deadly diseases. For example, Jared Diamond believes 95% of Native Americans were killed off by diseases carried by European settlers who were largely immune to said diseases. (link)

In a way, as different portions of the computer systems and software are attacked, the flaws that allow for such attacks are, in general, corrected. Problems identified in one attack can be applied to other areas, and as such, can affect system-wide changes toward a better system (think buffer overruns), as well as more security-minded design (think security developments in IE7 and Vista).

I'm not advocating that the world governments should let virus writers and crackers have free reign of the Internet. A balanced response would allow for leniency for those who have no malice in their intentions. Of course, this is difficult to prove, and from personal experience, I have yet to meet a virus writer with purely altruistic intentions. Also there are corporate interests to deal with as well. How embarrassing must it have been for Symantic to have their flagship product meant to help secure a computer be the source of insecurity? While Symantic handled the situation extremely well, many other companies do not have a large security minded staff on hand to deal with security problems. For them it is easier to accuse the attacker than acknowledge a problem they cannot deal with.

Re:Full disclosure is a necessary evil

[Anonymous Coward]

... but going in jail is may be a worse option.

It is true that bad hackers will pretend to be ethical hackers but by putting everone in jail you end up creating a less secure world. Only the bad hackers will find the security hole and they won't tell anyone.

Full discolure is the only solution and it is not popular: companies get bad press for having security holes, they might loose some business and thus try to shoot the messenger ... with success so far.

However, full discolure is a necessary evil it we want to have a safer online life.

As Good As It Gets

[Joebert]

I don't think the world can ever be truely secure.
The world is always in a sort of "Ok on the count of three, we all drop our guns" state.

Re:Full disclosure is a necessary evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, but there is a time and a place for full disclosure, and the situation is easily complicated. Even just the act of disclosure is uncertain. Publish to widely and be accused of helping hackers. Publish too narrowly, and be accused of not informing the public. Its a messy job.

Get the terminology right...!

[welshwaterloo]

Yeesh.. from the article:

Even old-fashioned e-mail worms, which rely primarily on user ignorance, can spread to hundreds of thousands of computers.

Now, I always thought a worm is "self-contained and does not need to be part of another program to propagate itself. They are often designed to exploit the file transmission capabilities found on many computers."

Geez people - if you can't cromulize your terminology, I have little faith in your article..

Certified Ethical Hacker

[Flying pig]

There is a possible way...

Introduce a properly run certification scheme for "Certified ethical hacker". Base it on a course taking in relevant law, security techniques etc., and make damn sure it is vendor-agnostic. Only make the course available to persons who have no criminal convictions, are on the voter's list, member of a professional body, and pass FBI checks or your national alternative. It will be free to qualified applicants.

Now issue those people with a set of official paper forms, with proper security marking and tied to the individual. When they encounter a security issue, they issue a paper based advisory (because it is still traceable, and because you do not then leave a trail on the net that might enable the black hats to find and target you.) copy to some official body who every year will report the statistics, and list the companies that failed to respond to security advisories.

So now you have it on your resume when you write in for the bank job: Certified Ethical Hacker, 42 confirmed alerts (or whatever).

Before anybody tells me this is simply fantasy, consider that there are already volunteer public security forces. In the UK we have Special Constables and the Territorial Army, and there are equivalents in many other countries. We have a Health and Safety Executive who can walk into any company at any time it is operating and demand immediately to observe what is going on. So why not a properly trained volunteer Internet security force?

Open doors vs Closed doors.

[Tei]

Imagine a white hat h4xo that found a dangerous hole, send info about that to admins, and that hole is fixed.

Its that good?

I think yes. but need:

1) The white hat attitude. Complete morons are discarded.
2) Its a hole, and not a feature. Maybe the users want the system this way, and know enough about the tradeoff.
3) The hole being fixed. If is imposible to fix holes, maybe because lack or resources, this help nothing. Of course, the problem here is the lack of resources.

On real world, some people want to live with his doors unlocked, mostly on rural areas. Its that a "hole"?. Its not. What safety expert AND ha4xors fail to realice, its that the world is not about of safety for everyone. Some people like his doors unlocked, thanks. Other people dont know about that, and will love to know about a hole, and fix it.

Too late

[MECC]

Microsoft has 'educated' an entire generation of users that you have to run with full root privileges to get anything useful done at all. This is completely independent from how they respond to security issues raised by third parties. The damage is so pervasive that it can't be undone. MS stands as the village idiot of software companies for such a stupid design paradigm, and the single biggest problem on the Internet, as well as the single biggest problem in the IT industry for so completely dumbing down so many people. I wouldn't look to vista to cure the ill either. The more MS talks about security, the more evident it is that they can't pull their head out of their ass, and they'll keep dumbing down their 'customers'.

Amazing... Student written huh?

[sarlos]

Does no one else here see the glaring hole in this person's argument? There is no such thing as a beneficial virus, worm, or trojan, period, end of story, thank you, have a nice day. Information Security is commonly accepted as a three-part problem: Confidentiality, Integrity, Avalability. Even seemingly innocuous viruses carry huge costs, mostly in the form of hindering Availability. Further, as a System Administrator, how can you ever be completely sure a virus that compromised a system was 'benign?' Answer: You can't. The only safe bet is to restore the system from the last safe backup.

The problem is akin to the broken window problem in economics. Sure, exploiting security holes leads to more fixes, but you have to take into account the costs. Further, this does not mean Information Security itself is improving, it simply means virus, trojan, and worm writers have to become more creative.

In short -- if this is what Harvard is producing these days, maybe it's time we re-asses the "Ivy League."

It's easy to immunize the internet...

[Rich7ejr]

... just kick all the homeless people off of it.

Uninvited entry should be punished.

[x-vere]

This whole debate about black hats, grey hats, etc. is ridiculous. I don't give a crap about itension for the intrusion. If I didn't invite you to break into my system, then you're trespassing and should be punished. I don't care if you've told me about it or not. Now, if you stumble and only stumble (As in not go any farther than to point out a potential weakness and not go snooping), that's different. You haven't actually hacked. When you cross that line, you've screwed yourself and should be punished.

Re:taken from the 'Bantown manifesto'

[tomhudson]

Your original premise has a few flaws:

The entire Internet is a single, uninterrupted deterministic state machine.

No, its not. Its neither single, nor uninterrupted, nor deterministic.

Its not a single state machine, because its not a single machine. By definition, the Internet is a collection of machines.

If you tried to push that analogy in any other field, the BS quotient would set alarms off immediately. For example, if you tried to say that people are a single person because all their interactions are connected, people would go, "yeah, whatever ..."

Its not an uninterrupted state machine, nor a deterministic state machine

As an aggregate of hosts, it literally ceases to exist in its current form as individual hosts drop off or connect. The fashion in which this happens is far from deterministic, since its under the control of all sorts of people - from the bubble-gum-chewing pop-tart-wannabe on myspace to the parv stalking same. Since the individual components actions are non-deterministic, the Internet is non-deterministic. Noboday can determine, even with a snapshot of the WHOLE Internet at point T in time, what will be happening at T+5 seconds.

Your argument, on the other hand, is a good example of GIGO - start with a flawed premise, produce a flawed result.

You even make my point when you state this:

If you download and execute my code, you have done so willingly.

... that the actions of the Internet cannot be predetermined because the the presence of you - a human being, who does not work in a deterministic fashion.

... and since YOU have added people to the equation in your argument, then I am allowed to add the argument that your statement about "willingly" requires informed consent. Informed consent requires full knowledge aforehand, not what you get when someone tries to do an anal probe on a server.

Your last argument also makes the point that people are the true owners of the net - when you say "OUR" machine - and people have the right to say how they want their property to be used, even in public spaces. If you don't believe that, please give everyone your address - I'm sure someone will be happy to rob you when you're in public, then present your own arguments as justification that you gave implicit permission by your very presence in public.