Re: n.runs, Sophos, German laws, and customer safety

computer systems Bruce Schneier Gene Spafford Matt Bishop Council of Europe denial of service luck If I software development Who's Who conclusive evidence legal customers security claims files

Hi,

it is important to notice this.
The mentioned german law comes after the similar french law called lcLEN 
(aka Fontaines's law).
In 2003-2004, a petition was done against this law, with around 15,000 
signatories...
http://www.iris.sgdg.org/actions/len/petition.html

for nothing...

"A new anti-security law was voted yesterday in France, this law called 
LEN (loi pour la confiance dans l'conomie numrique)":
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/359969

And after that we had the Guillermito's story
"Hacker Indicted In France For Publishing Exploits": 
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/31/1543248
http://constitutionalcode.blogspot.com/2005/01/guillermito-reverse-engineering.html

Good luck to our neighbours from Deutschland...
I salute you!
/JA

Steven M. Christey a crit :
> The n.runs-SA-2007.027 advisory claims code execution through a UPX
> file.  This claim is inconsistent with the vendor's statement that
> it's only a "theoretical" DoS:
>
>   http://www.sophos.com/support/knowledgebase/article/28407.html
>
>   "A corrupt UPX file causes the virus engine to crash and Sophos
>   Anti-Virus to return 'unrecoverable error. leading to scanning being
>   terminated. It should not be a security threat although repeated
>   files could cause a denial of service."
>
> It is unfortunate that Germany's legal landscape prevents n.runs from
> providing conclusive evidence of their claim.  This directly affects
> Sophos customers who want to know whether it's "just a DoS" or not.
> Many in the research community know about n.runs and might believe
> their claim, but the typical customer does not know who they are
> (which is one reason why I think the Pwnies were a good idea).  So,
> many customers would be more likely to believe the vendor.  If the
> n.runs claim is true, then many customers might be less protected than
> they would if German laws did not have the chilling effect they are
> demonstrating.
>
> It should be noted that in 2000, a veritable Who's Who of computer
> security - including Bruce Schneier, Gene Spafford, Matt Bishop, Elias
> Levy, Alan Paller, and other well-known security professionals -
> published a statement of concern about the Council of Europe draft
> treaty on Crime in Cyberspace, which I believe was the predecessor to
> the legal changes that have been happening in Germany:
>
>   http://homes.cerias.purdue.edu/~spaf/coe/TREATY_LETTER.html
>
> Amongst many other things, this letter said:
>
>   "Signatory states passing legislation to implement the treaty may
>   endanger the security of their computer systems, because computer
>   users in those countries will not be able to adequately protect
>   their computer systems... legislation that criminalizes security
>   software development, distribution, and use is counter to that goal,
>   as it would adversely impact security practitioners, researchers,
>   and educators."
>
> If I recall correctly, we were assured by representatives that such an
> outcome would not occur.
>
> - Steve