Author Kills DarkComet Spyware After Syria Uses It

judgecorp writes "DarkcoderSc (Jean-Pierre Lesueur) has ended the DarkComet Remote Access Tool (RAT) project, after it emerged that the Syrian government had used the software to spy on its opponents. The tool was also used to target Mac OS X systems last year."

Interesting.

[gcnaddict]

So this was... legal malware? Can someone clue me in on the history of this utility? As far as I can tell, this looks like proof-of-concept/research malware designed to be used for testing purposes, but that's the best I can gather.

Prosecute authors of remote administration tools?

[tepples]

This in the article worries me: "Symantec said that any closures of [remote administration tool] projects were a positive thing, especially if the creators were compelled to do so by the threat of prosecution." So are GoToMyPC, LogMeIn, and SSH considered terrorist tools now?

Re:Prosecute authors of remote administration tool

[Anonymous Coward]

So are GoToMyPC, LogMeIn, and SSH considered terrorist tools now?

No, you fucking idiot. But nice strawman since the person you quoted said nothing about terrorism.

Re:Interesting.

[davydagger]

at this moment, there is no class of code that is illegal. Its completely legal to write malware, viruses, network security tools.

Its only illegal if you use them against other people's computers. In fact most of the same tools used to break into computers are used to test security legimately, and many have even more diagnostic utilities.(wireshark, nmap, net cat, etc...)