Re: Reverse Engineering - Legality

[Jeffrey Walton <noloader () gmail com>]

Hi Chitan,

A few years back, I spoke with an EFF lawyer on RE and interop. He
told me that some RE was legal for interop purposes [1]. However, we
never spoke in terms of a security assessment. I suppose the next step
is to understand the legal points of "doctrines of merger" and "scenes
a faire".

Jeff

[1] "...the courts are willing to allow a limited amount of reverse
engineering of copyrighted materials for the purpose of achieving
interoperability between computer products as long as the final
product does not contain any infringing code. When it does contain
such code, it may at times also be excused under the doctrines of
merger and scenes a faire if it is necessary to achieve
interoperability or functions as a lockout code."

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 10:23 AM, chintan dave <davechintan () gmail com> wrote:
> Hi Experts,
>
> I need a small help from you.
>
> Is RE legal for security assessments of products purchased from vendors?
>
> There has been a bit of confusion around RE topic.
>
> I know it is illegal to do RE to steal the idea, however this one, I
> need feedback from you folks.
>
> If you can share some authoritative resources that could confirm on
> the legality/illegality, it would be great.
>
> --
> Regards,
> Chintan Dave,
>
> LinkedIn: http://in.linkedin.com/in/chintandave
> Blog:http://www.chintandave.com
>
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Prove to peers and potential employers without a doubt that you can actually do a proper penetration test. IACRB CPT 
and CEPT certs require a full practical examination in order to become certified. 

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