Re: what to do it illegal activity found during pen-test

From: mis@seiden.com
Date: Fri Jun 02 2006 - 18:55:11 EDT


is there a lawyer in the house? (not me).

the US law requires reporting from providers of "electronic
communications service" or "remote computing service". i don't believe
that pen testers fall under those definitions.

the provider's requirement to report comes with a good-faith safe harbor.

i see nothing that requires the absence of notification or action to some third
party, such as your client for a pen-test. what is this, a confusion with
National Security Letters?

see:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode42/usc_sec_42_00013032----000-.html

(see the page just prior if you're interested in child abuse, which
must be reported by a wide variety of people likely to have
professional contact with children, and therefore to detect it.)

there is a general civic duty to report violations of law. but i'm
not sure it's a crime to *fail* to report such.

a relevant and amusing web site:

http://www.ou.edu/oupd/selfarr2.htm

"If you witness a crime, it is your civic duty to report the crime to the police.

When a crime is committed, you have the right and responsibility to make a "Citizen's Arrest".

Thus, if YOU commit a crime, it would be extremely helpful (and
provide a savings of tax dollars) for you to perform a Citizen's
Self-Arrest."

etc.

On Fri, Jun 02, 2006 at 05:30:26PM -0400, Michael Scheidell wrote:
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Robin Wood [mailto:dninja@gmail.com]
> > Sent: Friday, June 02, 2006 4:51 AM
> > To: pen-test@securityfocus.com
> > Subject: what to do it illegal activity found during pen-test
> >
> >
> > Hi
> > I was wondering the other day, what should I do if during a
> > pen test I found some illegal activity (internal, not from
> > hackers) on the network being tested. My initial thought was
> > report it to the police and let them sort it out but then
> > thought I suppose that depends on the activity taking place.
> > One one hand you could find a ftp site with a couple of
> > movies on, the other you could find a website full of child
> > porn. The first may just need a mention to the company IT
> > staff, the second would definitely warrant police attention.
>
> Depends on jurisdiction.
> In US:
> Only one thing you have to report to police AND CANNOT TELL THE CLIENT:
> You find child porn (don't be dumb and copy it for proof!)
>
>
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you need to proactively protect your applications from hackers. Cenzic has the
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testing and vulnerability management needs. You have an option to go with a
managed service (Cenzic ClickToSecure) or an enterprise software
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