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Ripping a morsel of a meal from the talons of El Reg, we end up with something indigestible.
Rapid7, the flingers of the exploitation / testing framework that is Metasploit have revealed the effect of recent US regulatory changes via their blog.
A snippet:
Due to changes in regulatory requirements that are applicable to Metasploit (Pro and Community) and similar products, as of Sunday, April 19, 2015, individuals outside of the US and Canada who would like to use Metasploit Pro or the Metasploit Community Edition will need to request a licence and provide additional information regarding themselves or their organization designation.
In accordance with the new requirements, the request will be reviewed by Rapid7 and, unless the user is a non-US or non-Canadian government agency (or is otherwise ineligible to receive the products without approval from the US Department of Commerce), the request will be fulfilled.
This affects licence requests made through Rapid7.com as well as any third party sites that currently offer Metasploit Pro or Community products for download.
It seems we are yet again on the Magic Roundabout of encryption export controls and Clipper chip madness... who knows, maybe this time around it will be effective.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 23 2015, @01:05PM
An US government agency clearly is a non-Canadian government agency, therefore it is true that is a on-US or non-Canadian government agency, and thus is excluded by the unless clause. Similarly, any Canadian government agency is excluded since it is a non-US government agency.
The only non-excluded government agencies would be those which are both US government agencies and Canadian government agencies. But I don't think such agencies exist.
(Score: 2, Funny) by hendrikboom on Thursday April 23 2015, @01:50PM
Isn't there a jointly administered lighthouse somewhere that was established by treaty? It would be both a US and Canadian government agency. I seem to remember reading the treaty itself once in an idle moment in a library. Presumably it would be non-excluded.
-- hendrik
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Thursday April 23 2015, @05:15PM
Further, the announcement reads:
Due to increasing US and international regulatory restrictions...
It could just as well have been potential EU sanctions that the are attempting to avoid. Both Germany and the UK are actively penetrating private networks, and both of them have reason to not want penetration testing tools used by their targets. What better way than to get their buddies in the US government to make some bluster about exports? Mutual back scratching.....
That said, there have been no new regulatory changes on export encryption for a long time.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Thursday April 23 2015, @07:11PM
US of A is the government of 'Merica, that's why we're 'Mericans (fuck yeah). Canada is the official National Reserve of North 'Merican resources and culture. Canada will save the traditions, land, and culture while we experiment here in USA. Speaking about North 'Merica, Mexico is the penal colony where we send our undesirables. Unfortunately the boarder sprung a leak and we can't get our damn politicians to do a damn thing about it. I'd move up to Canada now, but I'm still waiting for NASCAR and Football to be imported into the Canadian National Reserve.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base