Germany passes 'anti-hacking tools' law

Germany has toughened up its cybercrime laws in an effort to close up loop-holes, including those dealing with denial of service attacks.

However, the law, passed on Friday, has drawn criticism for allegedly making illegal the development of dual purpose tools -- programs that can be used for both security research and for hacking.

An amendment to the UK Computer Misuse Act passed in November drew similar criticisms from UK security experts.

On the German law, heise Security and ars technica have gone into the dual purpose tools angle in more depth, while Computerworld UK has more on the law.