Lord joins campaign urging UK government to reform ye olde Computer Misuse Act
A Conservative peer has joined calls to reform the Computer Misuse Act (CMA) days after the government declared that infosec and "cyber power" are the key to British foreign and industrial policy for the 2020s. Lord Holmes of Richmond told The Register he wants to support British infosec companies, which he said were "held …
COMMENTS
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Thursday 18th March 2021 17:23 GMT Peter2
Re: Or just typing a url
He set off an intruder detection system and got prosecuted for typing a URL? The article your linking to says it's more than that.
Cuthbert, 28, of Whitechapel, London, told Horseferry Road Magistrates Court yesterday that he had made a donation on the site, but when he received no final thank-you or confirmation page he became concerned it may have been a phishing site, so he carried out two tests to check its security. This action set off an Intruder Detection System in a BT server room and the telco contacted the police.
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Thursday 18th March 2021 23:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Or just typing a url
Cuthbert simply appended "../../../" to the URL to see if folders higher up the tree were visible - for a badly coded website of the early noughties this was a standard trick to see if there was stuff available. That literally was the sum total of his actions.
It came back to bite the police as I withdrew all expert cooperation with them on a couple of cases which promptly collapsed and they still find it very awkward with the odious comments of "detective" Rob Burls usually pushed right back at them when help is requested.
AC for obvious reasons because I still consider the police as barely incomptent malicious fools when it comes to this stuff.
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Thursday 18th March 2021 18:49 GMT JassMan
@Zippy´s Sausage Factory
CyberUp is the name of a campaign led by NCC Group,..... It aims to rewrite the CMA to remove the threat of criminal prosecution from threat intelligence researchers.
Given that this is effectively an NGO there is a small chance that our superlazy government will cut and paste lots of their ideas into any forthcoming white-paper and we may end up with something useful. This is totally the opposite of where gov ministers let big business write their own laws in return for a promised job post parliamenatry career.
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Friday 19th March 2021 07:06 GMT amanfromMars 1
:-) I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. .... was then. Now is IT different ‽ . :-)
It aims to rewrite the CMA to remove the threat of criminal prosecution from threat intelligence researchers.
CyberIntelAIgent Threat Researchers are not threatened by criminal prosecution whenever they may so easily be able to remotely and anonymously and autonomously enable and instigate, driver and lead misdirections delivering clearly evident criminal persecution charges being made available for a pre-emptive strike against investigated true foe and investigating false friend alike.
Pull the pin on that Virtually EMPowered and Protected Device and all frenemies and foe perish in the blast. Take care, it is deadly dangerous IT and AI to both know and not know enough about.
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Friday 19th March 2021 09:51 GMT amanfromMars 1
Re: Cyber???
Perhaps it's my age, but whenever I hear 'cyber', I think of 'cybernetics', a term which in the mists of my memory is firmly associated with the former Soviet Union. What's wrong with 'IT security'? .... H in The Hague
Nothing, if you're fond and into the prosecution and persecution and preservation of classic oxymorons/impossible marriages of conflicted and compromised convenience.
Haven't y'all realised yet, ...... nothing is absolutely secure and secret and safe from presentation and sharing, and invariably the most powerful and controversial of matters at the most inconvenient and damaging of times.
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Friday 19th March 2021 12:53 GMT amanfromMars 1
Re: Force Majeure
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=9f8784de-aa99-4eed-ab92-79a3353582bf
Its a strange world ..... FlamingDeath
Thanks for direction to that info, you're a star, FlamingDeath ..... which seems simply to confirm, no matter what one might think to do to mitigate or prevent unfortunate unforeseen negative impact circumstances, shit is always gonna happen and cause one untold problems which no one had/has any effective solution for.
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Friday 19th March 2021 11:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Maybe I'm a cynic......
Quote: " It aims to rewrite the CMA to remove the threat of criminal prosecution from threat intelligence researchers."
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.....but this sounds like (another) "get out of jail" card for the folks in Cheltenham.
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M'lud...I was a "threat intelligence researcher" employed by <redacted>. My civil service boss <name redacted> told me to <redacted> against a Belgian telecomms company <name redacted>. And since I was working at home on this project, the plod thought I was a cyber criminal. I can corroborate that what I say is true with this material from the Guardian newspaper:
- https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/21/british-spies-hacked-into-belgacom-on-ministers-orders-claims-report
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"Not Guilty"
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Immediate outrage in The Sun at the "waste of public money" which "this malicious prosecution represents".
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Friday 19th March 2021 20:46 GMT Cederic
Well, a rewritten law could be far worse.
I don't give a shit whether some incompetent buffoon with a fancy infosec title thinks my box is the controller of a worldwide bitcoin hacking irc botnet ransomware worm, they do not have my permission to hack it and UK law had damn well not grant them freedom from prosecution.
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