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Comment by m12k | Hacker News Reader

Are there any compelling reasons why it should be legal to sell exploits to anyone other than the company whose software is vulnerable? By neatly bundling these exploits up and selling the hacking tool to the highest bidder, this company is giving nation-state spying capabilities to cartels and dictators who would otherwise not have had that. I don't see why that shouldn't be regulated the same way as if they were selling nukes.

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It's even more insane when you remember that strong encryption was regulated as munitions until the mid 90s [1,2] - and actual cyber-weapons aren't today.

Software that can cause real damage to not just data and business activities, but endanger lives is completely legal to sell to despotic lunatics. If you sold a bag of fertilizer to a Syrian you'd go straight to Guantanamo, but somehow this is okay.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20051201184530/http://www.cyberl...

Iirc the software sold by the NSO group is considered a weapon under Israel law, so it is somewhat regulated. Not as heavily as nukes though.

This begs the question: Is there a compelling reason why selling weapons to other states should be legal?

In Germany, our economy pretty much depends on weapons and cars, so that.

But apart from economic reasons, not really.

Laws are made by the government of the country in question and in this case the government, Israel, approved the sales and used them to its advantage.

LEO and TLA need vendors with constant supply of exploits.

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