Karen Challinor

UK

staring at clouds

"Clayton added specific programs, such as penetration testing tools, were designed with the express purpose of hacking into systems and that the distribution of such tools would be limited by UK law"

so my use of such a tool to test the security of my own or my customers systems would mean I am breaking the law and further that whoever provided me with such a tool would also be breaking the law

I'd best delete half my operating system tools then as these could be used to mount an attack on a remote computer, and Microsoft had best watch out as they supplied me with this system

where is the proof of intent ?

if someone launches an application that brings a remote network down and immediately attempts to rectify the situation and minimise the damage, it could be argued that it was unintentional, accidents happen and good training minimises the possibility of such accidents

on the other hand if the person concerned attempts to hide, maximise damage or more likely these days blogs about how they did it then that could be argued as proof of malicious intent

simply owning or distributing the tools should not be an offence, as I have said half the tools in your OS could be used to attack remote machines, you may not know how to use them but you do possess them, should you be criminalised simply for owning a machine with them on ?