The Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor General’s Office oppose amendments to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation to legalize the creation and use of malware by white hat hackers on the instructions of a client. The debate on this initiative took place on November 28 in the State Duma, RBC writes.
Security officials fear this will prevent them from punishing real cybercriminals. Ethical hackers themselves are unwilling to work due to the risk of criminal prosecution.
The legalization of white hat hackers has been publicly debated since last summer. The Ministry of Digital Development then decided to study and introduce the concept of bug bounty in the legal field. The approval of the bill may be postponed due to the position of the FSB and FSTEC, which are reluctant to liberalize the provisions of the Criminal Code.
The amendments propose allowing ethical hackers to study and test software to identify vulnerabilities and fix them, while requiring them to notify manufacturers about any “holes” found.
The authors of the document also want to allow the owner of information and the operator of information systems to involve third-party specialists to identify vulnerabilities, and also give the government the right to establish requirements for identifying vulnerabilities.
Participants in the meeting believe that if the amendments are approved, malicious hackers will begin to present documents confirming the conclusion of an agreement to test the information system and prove their innocence. In this case it will be difficult to punish them.
The task of ethical (“white hat”) hackers is to find all the vulnerabilities in a website or online service for further development. These specialists are in great demand, among them are those who were able to earn millions. A team of technical experts from Vivaldi Technologies previously spoke in more detail about this profession and how to get into it.
Author:
Karina Pardaeva
Source: RB
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
