[KLUG Members] Hacking a Hacker Legal?

[Tony Gettig]

I'm a little late chiming in on this, mainly because I was out of town.
This very question came up at the SANS security conference I just
returned from. A gentleman in the audience made this comparison of
burglary with cracking into a computer. The next day, another student in
the audience shared an email reply from a friend of his who happens to
be a judge. The comparison of burglary does not hold up in a court of
law because the laws that deal with burglary refer explicitly to
entering a physical structure. The bottom line is that the laws against
hacking are new and still emerging. I don't recall the specific law, but
a cracker can be nailed by some other law, though I don't think it's
been tested. Then again, finding the bad guy is next to impossible if
they're coming in through a network of netcat relays, right?

What would be cool is to see a presentation by an attorney on this
subject. 


On Mon, 2003-03-10 at 14:44, Greg Mason wrote:
> in the case of burgler breaks in, you have the right to use deadly 
> force to protect yourself, your family and your property.
> 
> so, what if you killed their computer? I mean after all, in "real" 
> life, you could disable their car if they were chasing you, right?
> 
> but, it's not legal to chase after the burglar and shoot them at their 
> home, is it?
> 
> how does it translate into the digital realm?
> 
> -Greg
> 
> On Monday, March 10, 2003, at 02:58  AM, Russell Dillenburg wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 8 Mar 2003, Peter Buxton wrote:
> >
> >> On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 10:11:48PM -0500, Robert G. Brown wrote:
> >>
> >>> IMO this is all a fools' errand, and it promotes lawlessness.
> >>
> >> Well, you can break people's stuff, or you can do low-level 
> >> harassment:
> >> misnamed files, file-sharing hosts that start nice, then tank to a 
> >> slow
> >> connection 10kB in.... That's perfectly legal.
> >>
> >
> > what if a burgler breaks into your house?  Is it legal for you to shoot
> > him?  Is that not trespassing?
> >
> > But wait.... If the hacker hacks you and then you hack the hacker 
> > doesn't
> > that mean you are trespassing on the hackers computer?
> >
> >>>> I wonder... Might this apply to spamsters, also?
> >>
> >> Hmm.... It might, if we can bounce spam off open relays into 
> >> spamsters'
> >> mailboxes.

...

-- 
Tony Gettig
http://www.VoiceoversNow.com