Lab Notes

A French court has found a man guilty of using reverse-engineering to find security flaws in an anti-virus product. The man, Guillaume Tena, found the flaws in Tegam's anti-virus software. As a software vendor, I can appreciate a company wanting to keep its trade secrets secret, but it is difficult to comprehend a security company trying to punish someone who is helping to make their product more secure. A hacker disassembling software in order to pirate it is one thing, a security researcher looking for software flaws is something else entirely. The correct response for Tegam would have been to thank Tena for his efforts and offer him a job.