Legal

Purpose and Uses of This Website

There are two main purposes to this website, which I feel should be outlined here.

The first is education. In this day and age, technology is a quickly expanding field, and your average person cannot keep up to date with the speed at which changes are occuring. To go along side this, unfortunately, are a new wave of defacers, crackers, hackers, phishers, scammers, carders, and malware authors (amongst others). Anything that fits into the aforementioned group is something we'd consider "Blackhat" - i.e., bad, illegal, and generally something you don't want to mix with. Because this new wave of "Blackhats" are coming onto the scene, and people don't keep up with technology generally, we felt (and still do feel) that there is inadequate education of the population at large as to the real threats out there. This is one of the reasons why Greyhat-Security.com exists - to educate your average person (and particularly those who already have their feet whet in IT (perhaps a Network Admin or IT Manager) about the risks they face in day to day life on the Internet (as the Internet is a big part of most people's lives), what techniques are being used by the "Blackhats" (so they can know what to expect), and how to defend themselves against it. This is mainly so people are falling blindly for the techniques of these "Blackhats", but so they can instead take a stand against them, and make their job that much harder to complete, and cause less grief for a lot of people.

The second reason is to teach advanced techniques to legal Penetration Testers. We here at Greyhat-Security.com have a passion for "hacking-like-activities" in a Legal Environment - so we can learn, and do "fun stuff", but without breaking the law (similar to Graffiti artists who tag in sanctioned areas [the look and fun of graffiti, for them, but without damaging or destroying], or people who go to shooting ranges to practice shooting but never kill [enjoying learning something new, perhaps using something a bit dangerous, but never using it for illegal things], or those who drift their cars at designated drift tracks [something which would otherwise be illegal on the road, and has no use outside of organised sporting events or recreation, but they do it for fun anyway]). In this way, we aim to teach those who do "hacking legally", also known as "Penetration Testing" (where you get employed by a company to think like a hacker does, then try and hack into their systems, but without damaging them, and present your findings to that company in order that they might better secure their systems against real hackers who would damage their systems, which prevents loss of money, jobs, and essential data), how to carry out some new techniques on their job, or inform them of new and upcoming issues which hackers are using in order that they may carry out their job to the best degree possible. In order to fulfil this task (of thinking like hackers do in order to test what hackers would try and break), we need to present certain pieces of information that could be misused. Law Enforcement are taught how to use guns, in order to use them if necessary to protect citizens, or Martial Artists are taught self defence in order to protect themselves from onslaught and attack - the information they are taught could also be misused to extensive consequences, including to the death of individuals, but it is necessary for them to be taught this in order to prevent harm coming to the innocent. In the same way that Police are taught this information and anticipated to use this information for the good of mankind, we teach information that has the possibility of being misused by the minority, but is taught for the good of mankind. Some Police go against what they are taught, as do Martial Artists, Gun Club members, School Principals, etc. - but they are dealt with appropriately by Law Enforcement. It's not those who taught the skills that are responsible, as they taught them with the intent to do good, but those who committed the crime that are responsible. Therefore, because the information we teach has the slight possibility of being misused (disappointing as it may be), we do have a policy to co-operate with Law Enforcement at all times. We have no intention of doing anything illegal, and we expect our users to be the same, so if we find any users misusing the information presented here, and it is severe enough that law enforcement is involved, we will be co-operating with them to provide information where requested. For the majority of you that are doing the right thing and practicing this in legalised environments however, you're fine, and have nothing to worry about.

As a side to these two main points, we also provide News, for those who are interested in what's going on in the world, and Forums for discussion of various topics.

Dealing with Illegal Content

As before, although we will be trying to keep the website clean of any illegal or illegitimate materials, these may sometimes be posted on the website by malicious users, bots, spammers, or others. In cases where this happens, it will usually be dealt with as a matter of course within approximately 12 hours. However, in cases this may be longer, and this is in no way an endorsement of such content, but simply because of an extended time frame between an Administrative User or a Moderator visiting the website (those with powers to remove such posts). To assist with dealing with illegal content, a number of counter-measures have been put in place:

• Unregistered users comments have to be approved before being posted, and are filtered initially by a "Captcha" service, which aims to deter spam-bots
• Registered users have to pass a "Captcha" to be able to register, which prevents bots from signing up and posting without pre-approval
• Un-trusted users cannot post articles in the main sites content
• No one aside from Administrators or Moderators can upload images/video/etc., to the main server - they are only able to provide links to content hosted elsewhere
• Employed "Moderators" and "Administrators" in various time zones in an attempt to ensure, to the best of our ability, that there is a member of staff available at all points to deal with any such illegal content

However, as in other areas of life, measures put in place don't always go to plan. As with see holes with out current setup, we will remedy them and add other countermeasures which will aim to fill those holes. Above all else, though, if you see Illegal Content, contact us immediately and we WILL remove it! We do not wish to be on the wrong side of the law. We do not want the same thing happening to us as happened to Blogetery.com, where the owner didn't take the time to look through his server to remove content - we're going to be proactive. We'll be looking for illegal content, and dealing with it where we find it. We'll also be implementing countermeasures where reasonably possibly (i.e., preventing spam bots from posting, preventing known IP's or IP Blocks from accessing the website, banning users, and so on).

Contact

In any event, the best form of contact is via the website's Contact Form. This will be the most direct method of contact, and will be read the soonest. If you must contact via email, send it to webmaster ::_L_:: @ ::_L_:: greyhat-security.com  (obviously removing the junk in between, so you have "webmaster" at "this_domain.com").