Point to own: the problem with hacking tools

It was 1995 and Dan Farmer and Wietse Venema had just launched the Security Administrator's Tool for Analysing Networks. 1 SATAN, as it was to become known, was a devilish tool indeed. On the one hand, it could be used discreetly by security professionals to scan networks and highlight holes in the infrastructure, so that they could be fixed. On the other hand, that also meant that it could be used to find holes in networks that could be exploited for nefarious purposes. Critics pointed this out, arguing that the tool would make hackers' jobs far easier. The controversy over weaponisable software tools is escalating. Software designed to footprint, enumerate and even compromise computer systems is becoming increasingly sophisticated. Some legal jurisdictions have made dual-use tools – those equally useful to legitimate security professionals and malicious actors – illegal. The debate about the wisdom of this looks set to continue for some time, explains Danny Bradbury.