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by voodooEntity8 hours ago |
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upvoteby ddevnyc6 hours ago|
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This is really regrettable. I think the biggest issue is that once such laws or case law are in place, it is really really impossible to repeal them, or to replace them with something more modern. So we're still applying horse laws to cars 100 years later.
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upvoteby rpicard8 hours ago|
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Are you referring to GitHub policies? I haven’t seen issues like that from people publishing security tools before.

Metasploit is one example: https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit-framework

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upvoteby voodooEntity7 hours ago|
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No im referring to the legal terms of germany, the country im residing at. Our laws regarding "hacking" are arguable the strictest and worst.

The problem is that they are formulated in a way that it is super easy to have your software being possible "dual use" and that a judge has to decide if its fine or not. Making it worse it also states your "intention" which well is impossible to proof - if the judge says he doesn't believe your intentions are only good, you can literally get massively sued.

So ye i could move to another country and than publish it - apart from that i can let it rot on my hdd (which is prolly what will happen).

Edit: Additionally mentioned, it is not just the publishing in germany, even the facilitating already which is why i don't even have an article about it (any more).

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upvoteby Centigonal6 hours ago|
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So would it be fair to say this is less about deterministic vs. LLM-driven tools, and more about software published out of New York vs. software published out of Germany?
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upvoteby voodooEntity2 hours ago|
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Yes and no. I have seen (not wanne name them now to not bring them into a bad context) several tools coming from germany which are well in questionable contexts but due to basically beein advertised as full LLM/AI driven its somehow not on anyones radar. So that is kinda a thing.

But sure location itself also plays a role no question.

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upvoteby Peacefulz2 hours ago|
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If getting it out there in the world is more important to you than stamping your name on it, pass it out to a friend who can publish it. Continue any related development in private. They can't stop you from distributing something they don't know you're developing.
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upvoteby voodooEntity2 hours ago|
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Well its not like i didn't consider it, but it heavily relies on stuff that i have written and that is well only used by me till this day. So arguably, publishing it this way it would still have like "points" which make it extremely related to only me.

Also asked the lawyer in consulted about it... i would be a heavy gamble

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upvoteby RamblingCTO7 hours ago|
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Really? Have there been any cases yet?

I'm asking cuz I started devloping a c2+agent+BOF kind of thing with custom bytecode vm for the lulz (to learn how stuff works nowadays) and it's on tangled and github :/

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upvoteby sdoering5 hours ago|
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Yes. More than one. This one was especially "interesting", a security researcher was tasked by a company to evaluate the ERP (I believe would be the acronym) software. Diiscovered an external database connection, looked at it, discovered this external DB contained sensitive information from other clients of that vendor - reported it, got sued, lost.

In German: https://ht-strafrecht.de/blog/strafrecht/it-sicherheitslueck...

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upvoteby voodooEntity2 hours ago|
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Ye you should be really careful on that one. If just somebody with a bad mood reports you, even if you have absolutely good intentions, it can cost you and if its just in spendings in a lawyer to proof that your fine....
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upvoteby actionfromafar7 hours ago|
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Intentions are very often a factor when it comes to law, and rightfully so. The problems come when you classify some category of software as "dangerous" by default. Software is special in that it can't be a "controlled substance". So everyone needs to have the tools to increase their security. That includes access to "offensive tools" to study what they do. A recent example was the Huggingface attack.
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upvoteby ksk235 hours ago|
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As I understand the hole shebang, the German law is about "does the court think you are `hacking` something?" -- this is against the law.

Yes, there was one German pentester that got sued, because he reported a BASE64 encoded, hardcoded authentication token in an application. Not that I would wish him anything like that and am ashamed by the outcome, I also recall that he might have tried to put pressure on the vendor by doing an interview with a blogger or so?

On the other hand, I do not know of any cases regarding publication of dual-use tools as OSS.

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upvoteby NickySlicks8 hours ago|
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Completely understand, the legal landscape has really shifted around AI/LLM tools. I see tools drop everyday that spit in the face of DMCA/Copyright law but they skirt by mainly because they leverage AI
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upvoteby sdoering5 hours ago|
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That has nothing to do with LLMs or not. If they were to "code" the same tool with an LLM, or build a LLM version of it, in Germany (where rthey are residing) they would face the same consequences.

Our legal system in that regard is total BS, when it comes to the so called "Hacker Paragraph". This comes with a sentence tht can range from a fine to up to one year prison time, just for producing such a tool. So if the police would actually - even if they had not published it - computer... well. They could be potentially "f**ed" (depending on how a judge would decide).

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