It may be illegal to protect your own network

A road less traveled

On July 31, 2001, I began the development of what would eventually become LaBrea. The road that was traveled to its current incarnation is well documented [1], because it was traveled quite publicly and with the help, encouragement, and feedback of many people.

On February 18, 2003, I released the current stable version of LaBrea (version 2.4). By that time, I had begun work on “the next big thing,” although I still get questions about LaBrea daily.

On April 15, 2003, it was brought to my attention [2] that distributing LaBrea from this site may place me in violation of Illinois Compiled Statutes 720 ILCS 5 (Criminal Offenses / Criminal Code of 1961) [3], specifically, Section 16-18 through 16-21.

The “Super DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act)” vs. LaBrea

This section of the Illinois Criminal Code was added on January 1, 2003 by Public Act 92-728 [4] and defines an “unlawful communication device” as “any communication device which is capable of … facilitating the disruption… of a communication service without the express consent or express authorization of the communication service provider …”

“Hackbusters [5]”

It's a shame really. The concept of a network tarpit is wonderful— basically a computer that accepts network connections and puts it on hold (for the technically inclined, it accepts a TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) connection, then only sends out “keep-alive” responses), indefinitely, which is useful in trapping network scans, exploits and virii. Dan (the network engineer I work with) and I were talking about them today and I was surprised he never heard of LeBrea. He was enthusiastic about the concept, and so am I (but never really had a chance to play around with it alas).

But this … gah! In-bloody-sane. It may be illegal to protect your own network—never mind that NAT (Network Address Translation)ing may be illegal depending on how you read these laws.

Sigh.

=> [1] http://www.sans.org/rr/attack/labrea.php | [2] http://slashdot.org/articles/03/04/15/1454218.shtml?tid=153 | [3] http://www.legis.state.il.us/legislation/ilcs/ch720/ch720act5articles | [4] http://www.hackbusters.net/sponsors.html | [5] http://www.hackbusters.net/

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