If your software is only intended to demonstrate the existence of a security flaw but contains no payload, then it is less obviously criminal. Still technically so, I suppose, but not so obviously that you couldn't make some kind of argument.
The collection of traffic and 'content' data is not beneficial though, so I suppose the treaty has to go for that reason.
> But: a State Party "shall not decline to act" under the provisions of the freezing, seizure and confiscation of the proceeds of crime "on the ground of bank secrecy". The Convention is expected to be adopted by the end of the year.
So Russia and any other can country can ask for records on any US person they want under a pretext of committing some crime there and unless the US is itself investigating this party then it's allowed? & conversely, if the US tried to do this Russia or any hostile country can just claim they're investigating said persons in crimes? Surely my reading of this is absurd & it's not actually this badly written?
It's particularly telling that it was Russia & China who proposed it in 2017 in the first place.
Say a foreign law enforcement entity is investigating Mr X, and asking a domestic authority for some information on Mr X.
The treaty says that generally speaking, the domestic authority should provide such assistance.
However, assume that instead another domestic law enforcement entity was asking the domestic authority for information on Mr X, but (under purely domestic jurisdiction) the domestic authority would be prohibited to provide such assistance for some reason (say, due to privacy laws, procedural protections, or so).
Then, the foreign law enforcement entity would not be entitled to the assistance, either.
You kind of just reworded what I wrote but I don't see how it changes any of the concerns I expressed.
> Advocates including the Biden administration said the deal reflects the interests of the U.S. and its allies.
I do not see anything criminal at all in writing some malware or exploits. _Applying_ them to a system, where they might cause damage however, that is a completely different matter.
You don't go after the blacksmith or manufacturer of kitchen knifes or guns either. You go after the one using them for the wrong purpose.
MaaS (malware-as-a-product) is certainly criminal. There’s no legitimate purpose in writing control servers or admin panels for DDOS or ransomware.
But I'm not really interested in drawing an actual clear line. I'm worried especially what will happen if a local police officer or court judge takes action based on their personal assessment of a cybercrime. And now, with this law, international action. Right now often DNS is sabotaged, usually on a way larger scale than necessary, to achieve a court order. Inconveniencing everyone, often right up to gTLDs.
Usually such a court order then doesn't work because the fact that a court case exists (and the time these things take) serves as ample warning for the malware authors plus you can use encryption to hide the command and control servers beyond the reach of even sabotaging DNS. And even that is assuming the damage isn't completely done by the time a decision is reached.
Actual prevention of malware attacks is the domain of extra-judicial agents working at security companies, and they usually disable malware by injecting their own payloads, something that even currently is highly illegal, and sometimes causes the justice system to go after these individuals.
The answer to this question is obvious and the question doesn’t have to be asked. In what kind of thinking a product considered malware would imply that its generic components are also malware? It is clear logic fallacy. Same with C&C software - I don’t get how do you generalize it to IRC. I do not also see how this generalization can happen in law enforcement or courts.
1) this is on a spectrum. For libssl it's pretty obvious. For DHT? Significantly less obvious, I would say.
IRC gets a mention because it has been used as C&C for a VERY long time, and hasn't changed anything to prevent this from happening.
2) it's not experienced techies that will make this choice. It's uninformed judges or even police officers directly.
2) it is very unlikely that police will go after such software. They need to connect it to their case first and that requires technical expertise, so it will likely be a cybercrime unit.