Vague Law Scares Off Toolmakers in Germany

An interesting article from O’Reilly courtesy of ER:

Vague Law Scares Off Toolmakers in Germany

“Today in Germany the Hacker Tool Law goes into effect. With the

official name of Paragraph 202C, it states that it is illegal to possess,

use, produce, or distribute a "hacker tool".
In theory, law enforcement could come and arrest everyone here at

Chaos Communications Camp. A group of hackers gathered in

solidarity to protest this law. Hackers in Germany have been

protesting the making of this law for the past year and are stunned

that it passed and has gone into effect.”

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“Security professionals in Germany have started removing exploits

and hacking tools from the Internet in response to a new German

law that expressly forbids the distribution of any software that can

be used in computer/network attacks.
Stefan Esser (left), the PHP security guru behind the recent

Month of PHP Bugs project, has yanked all the proof-of-concept

exploits from the project page because of legal concerns related to

the new law.
“This new law renders the creation and distribution of software

illegal that could be used by someone to break into a computer

system or could be used to prepare a break in. This includes

port scanners like nmap, security scanners like nessus and

of course proof of concept exploits,” Esser explained.”