3 ms·

When you do security work, that's an important part of your job. Sure, in many scenarios like traditional pentesting you can probably do fine within the legal b

When you do security work, that's an important part of your job. Sure, in many scenarios like traditional pentesting you can probably do fine within the legal boundaries in most jurisdictions, but as soon as you do serious security research when you actually test your ideas in practice, you're likely to cross the line sooner or later. It's a difference between "it should probably work" and "yes, it worked, I tried it." If you're afraid of the latter, don't get involved in security as you'll get burned sooner than later.

tralarpa 8y ago
> you're likely to cross the line sooner or later. That's basically the opposite of what security researchers working for companies and research institutes are doing. Document everything, get written consent of involved parties and sometimes even inform the police about a planned action. Make sure that you (a) don't cross the line or (b) move the line legally further away. Of course, there are security experts who don't care about that. But they usually don't publish their results on a website with their real name.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
  I'd argue the most interesting and important research is done in this way. It's not that these security experts "don't care", it's just the very nature of certain problems that you need to test them against real users (as opposed to, say, testing an exploit against a system). Consider, for example, honeypot research the very nature of such scenarios is that you can't even hint that users are tracked, let alone asking their consent.
  - tralarpa 8y ago
    The legal aspects of honeypots were discussed a lot when they became popular. Just two examples: https://www.symantec.com/connect/articles/honeypots-are-they-illegal https://www.symantec.com/connect/articles/honeypots-are-they... https://www.researchgate.net/profile/William_Yurcik/publication/3955168_Internet_honeypots_protection_or_entrapment/links/0deec53b570e0f0b3e000000.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/William_Yurcik/publicat... And they are still discussed, for example in the light of the new EU laws: https://jis-eurasipjournals.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s13635-017-0057-4 https://jis-eurasipjournals.springeropen.com/articles/10.118...
    - dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
      And they show quite well you can't have the cake and eat it. For example, Spitzner suggests displaying a banner... With all due respect, it's ridiculous. The whole point of this game is to make the attacker believe they're attacking the real system, not to make sure they "waive their privacy rights." I don't think anyone serious about really analyzing the behavior of attackers would ever care about these things. What is more dangerous is if a honeypot is used to attack another resource and you're sued by the owner, for example. It's really hard to avoid breaking a couple of eggs, no matter how you try.
  - tralarpa 8y ago
    > I'd argue the most interesting and important research is done in this way Links please :)
    - dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
      I'm sorry, I don't think I can provide any links. As an example, imagine you found out about Stuxnet much earlier before the general public.
- jsjohnst 8y ago
  > But they usually don't publish their results on a website with their real name. I can name a few who do, but I personally despise them after previous interactions with them and thus don’t want to inflate their ego with a mention.
PeterisP 8y ago
In this particular example there's absolutely nothing that required touching or duplicating the sites of others, the same PoC would work just as well without using a "competitor's website", it could be tested in practice simply by using multiple domains/sites that you fully own.

tralarpa 8y ago

> you're likely to cross the line sooner or later. That's basically the opposite of what security researchers working for companies and research institutes are doing. Document everything, get written consent of involved parties and sometimes even inform the police about a planned action. Make sure that you (a) don't cross the line or (b) move the line legally further away. Of course, there are security experts who don't care about that. But they usually don't publish their results on a website with their real name.

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
I'd argue the most interesting and important research is done in this way. It's not that these security experts "don't care", it's just the very nature of certain problems that you need to test them against real users (as opposed to, say, testing an exploit against a system). Consider, for example, honeypot research the very nature of such scenarios is that you can't even hint that users are tracked, let alone asking their consent.
- tralarpa 8y ago
  The legal aspects of honeypots were discussed a lot when they became popular. Just two examples: https://www.symantec.com/connect/articles/honeypots-are-they-illegal https://www.symantec.com/connect/articles/honeypots-are-they... https://www.researchgate.net/profile/William_Yurcik/publication/3955168_Internet_honeypots_protection_or_entrapment/links/0deec53b570e0f0b3e000000.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/William_Yurcik/publicat... And they are still discussed, for example in the light of the new EU laws: https://jis-eurasipjournals.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s13635-017-0057-4 https://jis-eurasipjournals.springeropen.com/articles/10.118...
  - dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
    And they show quite well you can't have the cake and eat it. For example, Spitzner suggests displaying a banner... With all due respect, it's ridiculous. The whole point of this game is to make the attacker believe they're attacking the real system, not to make sure they "waive their privacy rights." I don't think anyone serious about really analyzing the behavior of attackers would ever care about these things. What is more dangerous is if a honeypot is used to attack another resource and you're sued by the owner, for example. It's really hard to avoid breaking a couple of eggs, no matter how you try.
- tralarpa 8y ago
  > I'd argue the most interesting and important research is done in this way Links please :)
  - dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
    I'm sorry, I don't think I can provide any links. As an example, imagine you found out about Stuxnet much earlier before the general public.
jsjohnst 8y ago
> But they usually don't publish their results on a website with their real name. I can name a few who do, but I personally despise them after previous interactions with them and thus don’t want to inflate their ego with a mention.

PeterisP 8y ago

In this particular example there's absolutely nothing that required touching or duplicating the sites of others, the same PoC would work just as well without using a "competitor's website", it could be tested in practice simply by using multiple domains/sites that you fully own.