Waging War on Hackers

For the 2015 State of the Union address, cyber security played an important role.  New laws go-to-jailwere proposed.  Such laws are not unproblematic however.  Rob Graham made some interesting comments in the “Wired Magazine” about what might happen with such laws.  That is how governments, ours included, seem to act.  I would never think the bad consequences were intentional.  I think this is nothing more than a simple over-reaction to a problem which seems to get out of hand.  Hacking is the new scare.  People are either totally unprepared, or deadly scared.  Neither is rational.  Enacting laws when scared is almost a guarantee for enacting bad laws.  I recommend punishing performing a crime, but don’t make the punishment depending on the technology and on how scared the victims are.

In our opinion, there are better solutions to cyber-space problems.  The essence of the best solutions lie probably both in the social and economical adjustments.  However, the part of the solution a startup company like ours can safely provide is on the technological site.  With some good technological solution there wouldn’t be a need for overreacting and society would by kinder and safer.
There rarely is a one technology which fixes all. However, there are several technologies which can make a difference.  Tamper proofing your software for example. It may still be overkill for simple problems like stealing from buggy websites.  But tamper proofing is ideal for critical software.  Maybe this method of protecwe_the_peopletion will become standard and thus can easily be affordable, so it can be implemented everywhere, but not yet.  Tamper proofing may not be the only solution, but it is a good one.

Compare your digital treasures to your nest egg of savings.  Do you pile your money on the front lawn, make tougher laws and blame the neighbors when the pile is gone in the morning?  No, you put your money in a safe box or into a bank.  Equally, commercial software users and producers just need to do their part of due diligence in protecting software.

Hacker-Proof vs Tamper-Proof Software

DarkHand300Recently some people have asked us why we don’t call our software “hacker-proof tools” rather than tamper-proofing software tools. Both terminologies are correct of course, but we think the word “hacker” often has a connotation of “amateur” or at least not full time professional.

 

Yes, we want to protect your software from hackers, but we also want to protect it from professional code-breakers, competitors and virus developers.  Hence the stronger term tamper-proof.

(C) Copyright 2013 White Hawk Software