Panel - Licensed to Pwn - Weaponization and Regulation of Security Research

Licensed to Pwn: The Weaponization and Regulation of Security Research

Jim Denaro

Dave Aitel

Matt Blaze

Nate Cardozo

Mara Tam

Catherine “Randy” Wheeler

Security research is under attack. Updates to the Wassenaar Arrangement in 2013 established among its 41 member nations an agreement to place a variety of previously undesignated “cybersecurity items” under export control. After 18 months and a half-dozen open advisory meetings, the U.S. has taken the entire security research community by surprise with its proposed rule; we are confronted by a sweeping implementation with profound consequences for academia, independent research, commercial cybersecurity, human rights, and national security.

While the outcome of this round of regulatory intervention is still uncertain, the fact that there will be more is not. This panel of experts will discuss the context, history, and general process of regulation, as well the related question of “weaponized” research in regulatory discourse.

There is significant daylight between the relatively lax text of the Wassenaar Arrangement itself and the extraordinarily broad implementation proposed in the U.S. What will the practical effects of those differences be, and why did the U.S. diverge from the Wassenaar text? Regulators are, even now, still struggling to comprehend what the consequences of this new “cyber rule” might be. So, how are we to understand this regulatory process? What are its objectives? Its impacts? Its limits? How can we influence its outcomes?

Eleventh-hour interventions are quickly becoming a hallmark of regulatory activities with implications for the wider world of information security; the fight here is almost exclusively a rearguard action. Without resorting to the usual polemics, what failures of analysis and advice are contributing to these missteps – on both sides? What interests might encourage them? How are security researchers being caught so off-balance? Come victory or despair in the present case, this panel aims to answer the question of whether there is a solution that prevents technology transfer to hostile nations while still enabling free markets, freedom of expression, and freedom of research.

Dave Aitel (@daveaitel) is an offensive security expert whose company, Immunity, Inc., consults for major financial institutions, Fortune/Global 500s, etc. At the age of 18, he was recruited by the National Security Agency where he served six years as a “security scientist” at the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland. He then served as a security consultant for @stake before founding Immunity in 2002. Today, Dave’s firm is hired by major companies to try to hack their computer networks - in order to find and fix vulnerabilities that criminal hackers, organized crime and nation-state adversaries could use. Immunity is also a past contractor on DARPA’s cyber weapons project, known as Cyber Fast Track. The company is well-known for developing several advanced hacking tools used by the security industry, such as Swarm, Canvas, Silica, Stalker, Accomplice, Spike, Spike Proxy, Unmask - and, most recently Innuendo, the first US-made nation-grade cyber implant with Flame/Stuxnet-like malware capabilities. Immunity has offices in Florida, D.C., Canada, Italy and Argentina. eWeek Magazine named Dave one of “The 15 Most Influential People in Security.” He is a past keynote speaker at BlackHat and DEF CON. He is a co-author of “The Hacker’s Handbook,” The Shellcoder’s Handbook” and “Beginning Python.” He is also the founder of the prestigious Infiltrate offensive security conference (Businessweek article) and the widely read “Daily Dave Mailing List,” which covers the latest cybersecurity news, research and exploit developments.

Twitter: @daveaitel

Matt Blaze (@mattblaze) is a professor in the computer science department at the University of Pennsylvania. From 1992 until he joined Penn in 2004, he was a research scientist at AT&T Bell Laboratories. His research