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posted by Fnord666 on Friday July 05 2019, @03:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the only-hurts-the-white-hats dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow4463

YouTube's 'instructional hacking' ban threatens computer security teachers

Earlier this year, YouTube added hacking and phishing tutorials to its examples of banned video content — and that ban has been publicized thanks to an apparent crackdown on an ethical "white hat" hacking and computer security channel.

Kody Kinzie is a co-founder of Hacker Interchange, which describes itself as an organization dedicated to teaching beginners about computer science and security. Hacker Interchange produces the Cyber Weapons Lab series on YouTube, but yesterday, Kinzie reported that they were unable to upload new videos because of a content strike. "Our existing content is being flagged and pulled, just got a strike too," noted Kinzie.

We made a video about launching fireworks over Wi-Fi for the 4th of July only to find out @YouTube gave us a strike because we teach about hacking, so we can't upload it.

YouTube now bans: "Instructional hacking and phishing: Showing users how to bypass secure computer systems"

— Kody (@KodyKinzie) July 2, 2019

The rule is laid out on YouTube's "harmful or dangerous content" page, which bans "instructional hacking and phishing," i.e. "showing users how to bypass secure computer systems or steal user credentials and personal data." As Kinzieandothers on Twitter pointed out, even if that could stop some illegal behavior, it's potentially terrible news for anybody studying computer security — as well as people interested in countering hacking and phishing tricks. Hacking techniques are often used illegally, but they're not necessarily illegal. They're practiced by many legitimate researchers and computer system testers. YouTube has a similar ban for teaching theft techniques, but that's a much less popular (and expansive) pastime than learning about computers.

YouTube says the rule isn't new


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 05 2019, @10:04PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 05 2019, @10:04PM (#863658)

    No, the problem is nobody knows what the rules actually are, not even Google

    Not even jmorris! Because at his heart, he is an alt-right nihilistic anarchist, whole believes only in Sturm and Drang, Macht und Freiheit!

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