Security researchers are extremely worried by The Senate Bill 315 which is also known as the Computer Intrusion Bill has gotten the security researchers extremely worried as it threatens to criminalize them.
The bill is expected to expand Georgia’s present computer law to make what it calls a “new” crime of illegal or unauthorized computer access. It has penalties included in it which will be held against the ones who try to breach into a computer system even if no information is damaged or stolen. This could be a threat to Georgia’s cyber-security industry as the bill, if accepted and passed, could lead to the security researchers being penalized for tasks which are necessary to uncover the system bugs.
The bill was proposed up by Georgia’s senator Bruce Thompson and was accepted by its Senate. However, progress on the bill was put to an end and was very effectively made dead in its present form on Monday but has after then been revived because there was no substitute bill that could be offered. Craig Young who is a computer security researcher for an organization (Tripwire’s Vulnerability and Exposures Research Team) was of the view that security researchers form the first line of defense against information breaches and other such malicious activities in the cyber world. Ethical hackers find the loopholes in the system and expose them to their vendors/clients so that they can be fixed before they are exploited by unfair means. Serving this purpose is not at all a bad task as it is done with the intent of preventing a crime to occur.
He opined that criminalizing “ethical hacking” is indeed a very bad idea as it will help expose consumers to more threats and will consequently harm Georgia’s cyber-security industry. Therefore, only those actions should be penalized which are illegal and have malicious impacts.
Source: InformationSecurityBuzz