North American Network Operators Group

Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical

Port scanning legal

  • From: Edward S. Marshall
  • Date: Tue Dec 19 10:51:19 2000

http://www.securityfocus.com/templates/article.html?id=126

A quick quote from the article:

    A tiff between two IT contractors that spiraled into federal court
    ended last month with a U.S. district court ruling in Georgia that
    port scanning a network does not damage it, under a section of the
    anti-hacking laws that allows victims of cyber attack to sue an
    attacker.

    Last week both sides agreed not to appeal the decision by judge Thomas
    Thrash, who found that the value of time spent investigating a port
    scan can not be considered damage. "The statute clearly states that
    the damage must be an impairment to the integrity and availability of
    the network," wrote the judge, who found that a port scan impaired
    neither.

This may have ramifications for both security professionals and abuse desk
personnel; this ruling would seem to make it clear that you cannot claim
time spent investigating abuse issues as damage. The complete finding is
here:

    http://pub.bna.com/eclr/00434.htm

Any armchair lawyers on the list want to take a crack at this?

-- 
Edward S. Marshall <[email protected]>           http://www.nyx.net/~emarshal/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[                  Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.                  ]