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[News] Feds Use Some Bogus "Computer Fraud and Abuse Act" to Sue Researchers

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MIT Students Gagged by Federal Court Judge

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| EFF Backs Researchers Forced to Cancel Presentation on Transit Fare Payment 
| System 
| 
| Las Vegas - Three students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 
| were ordered this morning by a federal court judge to cancel their scheduled 
| presentation about vulnerabilities in Boston's transit fare payment system, 
| violating their First Amendment right to discuss their important research.   
| 
| The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) represents Zack Anderson, RJ Ryan 
| and Alessandro Chiesa, who were set to present their findings Sunday at 
| DEFCON, a security conference held in Las Vegas. However, the Massachusetts 
| Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) sued the students and MIT in United States 
| District Court in Massachusetts on Friday, claiming that the students 
| violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) by delivering information to 
| conference attendees that could be used to defraud the MBTA of transit fares. 
| This morning District Judge Douglas P. Woodlock, meeting in a special 
| Saturday session, ordered the trio not to disclose for ten days any 
| information that could be used by others to get free subway rides.         
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http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/08/09

How about thanking them for finding the flaws? Or making the system more robust
and secure? Watch the one below.


Recent:

Chipmaker sues to quash info on smart card security flaws

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| A semiconductor company is suing a Dutch university to keep its researchers
|                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| from publishing information about security flaws in the RFID chips used in up
| to 2 billion smart cards.
|
| [...]
|
| Call out the military
|
| Nohl said the problem lies in what he calls weak encryption in the MiFare
| Classic smart card. In March, he said that once he had broken the encryption,
| he would only need a laptop, a scanner and a few minutes to get the
| cryptographic key to an RFID door lock and create a duplicate card to open it
| at will.
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http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php?id=765846447&rid=-50
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