Call yourself a hacker? Your computer could be seized without warning

Open source developer labelled as a hacker in copyright infringement case to have his computer seized. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Describing yourself as a "hacker" – in the sense of someone who messes around with computer code – could lead to your computer being seized without warning.

A US government contractor, Battelle Energy Alliance, has used the fear of criminal hackers to obtain a court order to seize the computer of an open-source developer, Corey Thuen, who worked for it, despite him not being present in court.

The company used an argument of copyright infringement and the reputed ability of hackers to cover their tracks online to obtain a court order against Thuen. It argued that he was likely to destroy evidence on his hard drive.

As well as being an open-source developer for Southfork Security, Thuen is a cybersecurity professional who previously worked for the FBI among other US government agencies.

The official documents specifically state that "the court finds it significant that defendants are self-described hackers".

"This makes it likely that defendant Thuen will delete material on the hard drive of his computer that could be relevant to this case. The tipping point for the court comes from evidence that the defendants – in their own words – are hackers," the court documents continue.

All hackers are bad

The court's actions specifically call into question who should and shouldn't be labelled as a hacker, and whether all hackers are inherently disposed to use their technical skills with criminal intent – an idea disputed by the cybersecurity company Thuen works for, Southfork Security, on its website:

We're pretty good at hacking things. The idea is:

1. Identify what you want looked at
2. We hack it
3. You fix it

Your customers love you and you gain a little bit more peace of mind. We wouldn't mind bringing your people in to participate and see first-hand how an attacker views your system. We'd love to train ourselves out of a job.

National security

The order also prevented Thuen from releasing his allegedly copyright infringing open-source software, Visdom, a network visualisation and whitelisting tool that is used by security personnel to identify issues and weaknesses within a secure network.

Thuen previously worked on a similar tool as an employee of Battelle Energy Alliance called "Sophia", which forms the basis of the alleged copyright infringement. 

Battelle Energy Alliance also alleged that Thuen's work also endangered US national security, stating in its complaint that, "given the nature of Sophia, defendants' actions have implications for our national security. Defendants know of these implications but have ignored them."

A statement on the Southfork Security website said: "Obviously, until the injunction hearing, we can't say anything about what's going on, and until the forensics guys are done imaging our computers, as they are right now, we can't even type it. But I think it's safe to say that, no, we didn't steal government code and then open-source it."

 Github: evidence source?

Thuen denies the allegations of copyright infringement, citing the different programming languages used between the two programs and the heavy reliance on existing open-source elements within Visdom as evidence, as well as the complete coding history available on the open-source code storing and documentation website Github.

"They didn't check Github. And if they had, they'd have found out that the open-source project is built in a different language, using open libraries," Andreas Schou a lawyer who has previously represented Southfork Security told TechDirt.

"Visdom's heavy use of open source libraries facilitated its development in a matter of several months," Thuen added.