Links from 2012-04-09

Watch Out, White Hats! European Union Moves to Criminalize ‘Hacking Tools’ | Threat Level | Wired.com

While the law seems aimed at blackmarket tools that can be used to create malware infested sites, it’s also likely to criminalize tools used by researchers, developers and black hats alike – including tools like fuzzers, the Metasploit penetration testing tool and the wi-fi sniffing tool Wireshark. (Perhaps even the command line would be outlawed.) U.S. law remains murky or outright dangerous for security researchers, hacktivists and curious citizens. Provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act make it a crime to get around encryption built into products, with only a few exceptions. And federal prosecutors have tried to prosecute citizens under federal anti-hacking laws for violating the terms of service on a social network. The E.U. ban could, if enacted, have consequences across the pond. Recently, the U.K. approved extradition of one of its citizens to the U.S. to face copyright infringement charges for a site that linked to online television shows.

Corporate perk or monopolist bribery? « Karsten on Free Software

Staffers in the European Parliament are facing a challenge to their ethics. A company is offering all of them a gift which could not only compromise their independence, but also get them in hot water for copyright infringement. The people working at the European Parliament now need to make a choice: Leave the gift on the table and earn the respect of the citizens they’re working for, or compromise on ethics. The company in question is Microsoft, and the gift is a bunch of proprietary programs. Through the Parliament’s administration, Microsoft is offering staffers (though probably not MEPs) gratis licenses to Microsoft Office, Project (a project management software) and Visio (a diagramming tool). This happens under the so-called “Home Use Program“. The most obvious problem is that the parliament’s staff are working on regulations that govern the very business that is now making a gift to them. That’s a clear conflict of interest which can’t be explained away.

CONSILIUM - List of EU Approved Cryptographic Products

nformation Assurance (IA) in the field of communication and information systems is the confidence that such systems will protect the information they handle and will function as they need to, when they need to, under the control of legitimate users. Effective IA shall ensure appropriate levels of confidentiality, integrity, availability, non-repudiation and authenticity. IA shall be based on a risk management process. Where the protection of European Union Classified Information (EUCI) is provided by cryptographic products, such products shall be approved as follows: …

A Whip to Beat Us With

“… If you ever decide to switch devices, with IPG you’ll always be able to take your e-books with you. You bought them, you own them, and we’ll always make sure that you have a way to convert your e-books to the latest and greatest devices. Changing devices and platforms shouldn’t mean throwing away your library.” … In January, Apple released its iBooks 2 app for authoring e-books to be displayed on the iPad. The fine print on the licensing agreement says that any book created with the iBooks authoring app can only be sold in the Apple store, because the program’s proprietary design elements give Apple a stake in the product, and thus the right to tell you what to do with the book you create using it.

Tagged as: delicious, links | Author: Martin Leyrer
[Dienstag, 20120410, 04:00 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)