Re: nmap illegal to use?

[Thomas Reinke <reinke () e-softinc com>]

There are some pretty compelling arguments in the paper, and a hell
of a lot of research backing it up.

If you have a legal interest in the issue, I'd suggest taking
a complete read through the paper.

Some of the interesting bits (and please note these are out of
context...you really should read the article located at
http://grove.ufl.edu/~techlaw/vol6/Preston.html)

"COMPUTER FRAUD, ACCESS AND NMAP:
Most American jurisdictions have computer crime laws which include 
prohibitions on unauthorized access. ... As a threshold for criminal 
liability,  "access" proves to be a tremendously porous border."

TRANSLATING "ACCESS" INTO REAL LIFE ON THE INTERNET
"...A court deciding whether to assign liability would first inquire 
into what technical measures were used; the court must find the 
fences in cyberspace. Next, the court must decide whether the technical 
measures were reasonable. The computer owner who failed to
protect against banner-grabbing should not have legal recourse when 
banner grabbing identifies his operating system. A computer owner who 
used a firewall that prevented port scans but not nmap-type OS
fingerprinting
might establish a strong case for liability against a nmap scanner."



Tom Brays wrote:
> Have you seen this one yet? Give me a break!
>
> "The Journal of Technology Law and Policy has a good article on computer security and privacy. If you ignore the more 
> metaphorical crap at the beginning of the article, the author marches through some laws that apply to the Internet 
> and shows how they apply and why his way of deciding what kind of access to a computer breaks the law and what kinds 
> don't is better. (Its based on property and expectations of privacy.) It's interesting to see the computer security 
> from a lawyer's point of view. Especially interesting are his claims that using nmap is illegal, despite the VC3 v. 
> Moulton case."
> --

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