Because this is the law here and they'll always apply it as broadly and wrongly as they possibly can you have to consider the extremes on this. At what point do you draw the line? To go with the hypothetical worst case scenario, what if little bobby tables goes to sign up for a account somewhere, does he get charged with "attempted hacking"? This also puts grey and white hat hackers in a dangerous place as well (particularly grey hats which are already on shaky ground as is).
Yes they do.
>clear intent
Intent of what, exactly? Intent to make the site do something it wasn't explicitly designed to do, yes, but that does not imply exceeding authorized bounds or causing any harm.
It depends on the details.
Deliberately injecting "SELECT * FROM customers" can potentially exceed authorized bounds. (Even then the intent might not be there in all cases.)
Injecting "SELECT 1=1" to see if the system is broken is clearly not exceeding authorized bounds.
There is a huge gulf between checking for access and abusing access.
By checking all the locks, and not just a handful of them?
I don't think it's enough to show he was thorough to establish there is actual mens rea for a crime to have been committed.
I bet that site had at least 44 separate form inputs. No sense checking just a handful of them. None of the third-party certifications you suggest looking for to assess a vendor's worthiness are even roughly analogous to a bank with, for example, FDIC insurance.
If I have never undergone the certification processes myself (or perhaps even if I have, more so) they are the information-security equivalent of "tiger repellent" to me. I can only take the word of "experts" that they are good.
If I can't tug on all the exposed levers, then I guess at least I can be assured only people who are paid to do that (or people who are breaking the law) have actually tugged on them.
Can you understand how this kind of assurance would not reasonably instill any confidence of a system's security? The law does not forbid one from looking over one's own shoulder, so why should it be any more criminal to do that at every single corner you passed, even in an airport?
There is a reason info-sec experts are sometimes seen as paranoid, it's because you don't know if you don't check.
While 3rd party certifications might not hold the vigor of FDIC insurance you are unlikely to put information on a website that is as valuable or irreplaceable as what you put into a safe deposit box. Most of time we're talking about a name, address, and potentially credit card information as the maximum damage possible. Well, your name and address are almost certainly already public record. Your credit card similarly has excellent protection and aside from some incredibly rare nightmares most people who have their CC info stolen are back to normal within a few days of calendar time and less than an hour of time actually spent dealing with the issue. If you're putting something more valuable on the website you're perfectly within reason to contact the vendor and request permission to perform a security analysis or have your own trusted security analysis vendor perform such tests. This happens all the time in business.
You can feel assured that only people who are paid to tug on the levers or people who are breaking the law are the only people tugging the levers at every company you conduct business with.
And the literal "tuggin on the lever" analogy is really poor. A closer analogy would be, "I know many locks are vulnerable to being opened with a specially crafted bump key. I will walk around the building after hours and attempt to use a bump key on all the doors to ensure it's safe to conduct business here."
We are going to have to agree to disagree. You seem to think that performing SQL injection, even just to see if it is possible and with no intent to steal information or in furtherance of any crime, should be criminally prosecuted.
I think that SQL injection is such a basic attack that they should teach everyone how to perform it in introductory CS courses or earlier, as only through awareness of these basic forms can we all stamp out the threat of our own global systemic ignorance of those kind of forms.
It's not a kind of magic. Nobody is born with the knowledge that "SELECT * FROM Table WHERE #{userdata}" is completely and perfectly wrong approach to taking input from users in any production system. You have to learn it somehow, and the law practically forbids you from learning it through application in the wild. So I suppose only criminals will get to have guns, then.
> You can feel assured that only people who are paid to tug on the levers or people who are breaking the law are the only people tugging the levers at every company you conduct business with.
I understood that already, and it didn't make me feel warm and fuzzy. I don't really think there's a ghost's chance that I'm in the majority here, either, and I do find that to be a shame. Even many otherwise smart people are just totally ignorant of computers.
Which situation is preferable:
a) As a new business, I am contacted by a good Samaritan who informs me that my public website is vulnerable to a common attack. I take this information to my development staff and they verify that we are indeed vulnerable, then we fix it. Millions are saved. I send a thank-you note to my new friend in Samaria and maybe even write a check.
b) Good Samaritans are prevented from helping by laws that divide adept lever pullers into only two groups: the paid kind and the unauthorized kind. There are then never good Samaritans because every Samaritan needs to take steps to remain anonymous themselves before performing any deeds which could constitute "an attempt to obtain unintendedly authorized access".
It's clear that "The only reason to obscure the origin of a packet is in order to not be the one caught sending it." Anyone who does not want to get caught doing whatever they are doing, I think it follows obviously, can't possibly be helping but only up to no good. Now all Samaritans with knowledge of SQL injection are at odds with web service companies and all good and rational Samaritans do the smart thing and cease all helping. If anyone helps, they will do so anonymously; if they are identified, they will have to swear they only found the issue by accident and didn't even really know what to look for.
In (B), your ability to secure yourself is directly at odds with the amount of spare time those (real) hordes of bad Samaritans or other nationalities behind seven proxies can spare. Got unlimited money? If you can't pay for enough pen testing, well I hope you did security right because nobody is going to help you now. Is that really the preferable scenario?
We have varying degrees of laws protecting certain kinds of "Good Samaritans" in cases of medical emergency, they are on the books in every state. Unless or until it's an issue of something wrong on a computer. There is no such similar protection for any security pros or curious tinkerers.
People who legitimately stumbled onto vulnerable services are best advised to never report them to anyone and forget whatever issue they saw, or they are persecuted by the FBI and prosecuted through CFAA and other legal channels. This cannot be considered optimal!
Username: Lawtonfogle
Password: hunter2' OR 1 = 1;
Username: admin
Password: hunter2' OR 1 = 1;
You know, rudimentary attacks that should not succeed on any type of vendor system that has been through the most basic security audit or pen testing?
I guess we should either trust the vendor or don't. No real reason why would anyone want to see if other hackers with basic knowledge can get access to a system? I'm sure there are plenty vendors with transparent public records of the authorized penetration tests that they have ordered which have been done, you can trust!
So, the only problem left is how to establish your standing to sue the lazy vendor. It is a problem since you can't actually bring them up on negligence charges if you were not actually damaged.
Well, if picking the lock is thus illegal per your analogy, then the only way to have standing would be to first submit yourself to potential unknown harm and wait for the day when a bad hacker comes!
I think your analogy falls down too, because a brick-and-mortar storefront holds its own assets and is liable (or insured) for their own losses in the event of theft. You rarely store your own private things inside a brick and mortar storefront. If you did and they are stolen, the store would normally be liable and reimburse you.
People store their private data "in the cloud" all the time, but because of arcana in law which does not correctly distinguish between pulling on the handle and picking the lock, they are not allowed to check and see if the cloud-monger actually locks the door when he goes home at night?
Prevent this kind of scan makes all of us less safe, since it encourages negligent behavior like taking risks with data that's not yours. Frankly, I think website owners should be held liable for security vulnerabilities.
This kind of culture of systematically undermining a secure internet only serves those who abuse our trust. Do you honestly think the FBI has a chance in hell of actually catching more than a minute fraction of all malicious hackers? Not to mention the fact that their motives here and elsewhere are rather questionable - if anything, they're less benign than the hackers they're chasing, seeing as they're essentially untouchable for whatever damage they cause.
This is equivalent to "checking to see if the door is unlocked when it should be locked" not "trying to pick the lock after hours"
As to trusted certification - please elaborate; because many of these "certifications" are entirely worthless (some indeed indicate that a site is less likely to be safe).
It does show some kind of theoretical preference for security but it by no means assures one -- nevermind making any kind of a guarantee -- that said preference has been successfully translated into reality.
I would suspect that the rate windows or doors left accidentally unlocked between houses with security systems and without isn't a substantial enough difference to be meaningful. Sure the right might drop in half, but if it's from 4% to 2% that doesn't do much.
Having an SSL certificate is really the bare minimum that someone can do to have even a hope of a prayer of keeping data safe. There are about a dozen steps beyond that which must be taken. Worse, the effects are not additive, but multiplicative. If any one particular defense is handled improperly the properly handled other portions lend little/no assistance.
Naively one might assume that the total security score might be tabulated this way:
( 1 + 1 + 1 + 0 + 1 + 1 ) / 6 = 0.833
But in fact, it's this way:
1 * 1 * 1 * 0 * 1 * 1 = 0