Comments on: Anti-security company VUPEN claims to have broken Windows 8 & Explorer 10, will sell exploits to cops, governments & wiretapping vendors

By: IronEdithKidd

IronEdithKidd — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 13:58:00 +0000

That’s what the RIAA and MPAA got Hadopi for, no?

By: imaguid

imaguid — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 16:30:00 +0000

unfortunately that’s not how VUPEN works. they aren’t a security company, they’re not interested in improving anyone’s security, they’re an anti-security company as mentioned in the post. they make it their policy to not sell the information to the affected vendors. they’ve realized that that hurts their bottom line. they can make more money by:

1) selling to governments

2) selling the same thing to multiple parties

3) not invalidating the value of the exploit by helping the vendor fix the problem (an exploit with a long life has more value to people who want to use it to attack others than one that gets fixed in a few hours/days/weeks/months).

By: foobar

foobar — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 07:47:00 +0000

Looks like they’re French, and thus above American law.

By: nosehat

nosehat — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 07:10:00 +0000

Assuming that this information they are selling could reasonably be used to break into computers with some copyrighted content (oooooh!), they are breaking the law, specifically that part of the DMCA that deals with "Distribution of Circumvention Tools". See here.

(2)No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that— (A)is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;

Granted the DMCA sucks, but as long as it's still on the books, why not apply it here and actually make it do some good for society?

By: soylent_plaid

soylent_plaid — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 22:22:00 +0000

Christ what a (group of) asshole(s).

By: wysinwyg

wysinwyg — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 20:46:00 +0000

But what about the costs imposed by tarnishing the brand…

…sorry, couldn’t finish that with a straight face.

By: Crap

Crap — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 19:59:00 +0000

Fucking terrorists.

By: blissfulight

blissfulight — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 19:39:00 +0000

Where’s Anonymous when you need them?

By: foobar

foobar — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 19:35:00 +0000

It’s going to be worth more to miscreants than it is to Microsoft to fix.

By: kmoser

kmoser — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 18:56:00 +0000

They have done Microsoft’s debugging work for them. Redmond just needs to cut them a check, fix the bugs, and move on. Free market at its finest!