US Govt proposes to classify cybersecurity or hacking tools as weapons of war

What's the old saying?
The government hates competition?

Our government hacks the shit out of other countries computer systems and sends out computer viri on a regular basis.

This could be disasterous for Anti Virus businesses unless they design some kind of loophole for them.

Typical governmental operating procedure, overkill because no one has any fucking common sense or can see any potential long term effects anymore.

You know how they say that peoples attention spans have gotten way shorter than they used to be?
That is who is running our government too.


US Govt proposes to classify cybersecurity or hacking tools as weapons of war

By Manish Singh
Published 3 days ago


Until now only when someone possessed a chemical, biological or nuclear weapon, it was considered to be a weapon of mass destruction in the eyes of the law. But we could have an interesting -- and equally controversial -- addition to this list soon. The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), an agency of the United States Department of Commerce that deals with issues involving national security and high technology has proposed tighter export rules for computer security tools -- first brought up in the Wassenaar Arrangement (WA) at the Plenary meeting in December 2013. This proposal could potentially revise an international agreement aimed at controlling weapons technology as well as hinder the work of security researchers.

At the meeting, a group of 41 like-minded states discussed ways to bring cybersecurity tools under the umbrella of law, just as any other global arms trade. This includes guidelines on export rules for licensing technology and software as it crosses an international border. Currently, these tools are controlled based on their cryptographic functionality. While BIS is yet to clarify things, the new proposed rule could disallow encryption license exceptions.

The new proposal is irking security researchers, who find exporting controls on vulnerability research a regulation of the flow of information. You see, these folks need to use tools and scripts that intrude into a protected system. If the proposal becomes a law, it will force these researchers to find a new mechanism to beat the bad guys.

As per the agreement, the new definition of ‘intrusion software’ refers to a tool which is capable of extraction or/and modification of data or information from a computer or network-enabled device. The modification also includes tweaking of the standard execution path of a program. In addition, the tool could also be designed to avoid detection by “monitoring tools” (software or hardware devices such as antivirus products that monitor system behaviors or processes running on a device). Tools including hypervisors, debuggers and others that are used for reverse engineering software won’t be considered as “intrusion software”.

My emphasis.

Yet another example of governments pissing down their legs and seeing every problem as a nail sticking up when they have $600 hammers laying around all over the place.


Link originally found at Blacklisted News.