Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Nightcrawler – A local AI pentesting agent running on a smartphone

github.com

11–20 of 38 posts

Re: Show HN: Nightcrawler – A local AI pentesting agent running on a smartphone

#11
post #5

Why phone? This cuts out a lot of phones. Why not on a computer?

I used to red team professionally, and it is a lot easier to sneak an unauthorized phone into a facility than a computer.

Agreed. Also less noticeable when "accidentally" dropped/left, especially in tight spaces out of view. And better odds of plausible deniability if caught or device is later found and somehow traced to you.

Re: Show HN: Nightcrawler – A local AI pentesting agent running on a smartphone

#12

The following rant is not against the owner/project - but... What an irony. I cant publish a attack surface mapping / pentesting tool i wrote which runs fully deterministic and really controlable due to "dual use" legal problems - but llm driven tools hit public space...... sorry for the rant....

Are you referring to GitHub policies? I haven’t seen issues like that from people publishing security tools before.

Metasploit is one example: https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit-framework

Re: Show HN: Nightcrawler – A local AI pentesting agent running on a smartphone

#13
post #12

The following rant is not against the owner/project - but... What an irony. I cant publish a attack surface mapping / pentesting tool i wrote which runs fully deterministic and really controlable due to "dual use" legal problems - but llm driven tools hit public space...... sorry for the rant....

Are you referring to GitHub policies? I haven’t seen issues like that from people publishing security tools before. Metasploit is one example: https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit-framework

No im referring to the legal terms of germany, the country im residing at. Our laws regarding "hacking" are arguable the strictest and worst.

The problem is that they are formulated in a way that it is super easy to have your software being possible "dual use" and that a judge has to decide if its fine or not. Making it worse it also states your "intention" which well is impossible to proof - if the judge says he doesn't believe your intentions are only good, you can literally get massively sued.

So ye i could move to another country and than publish it - apart from that i can let it rot on my hdd (which is prolly what will happen).

Edit: Additionally mentioned, it is not just the publishing in germany, even the facilitating already which is why i don't even have an article about it (any more).

Re: Show HN: Nightcrawler – A local AI pentesting agent running on a smartphone

#16
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you referring to GitHub policies? I haven’t seen issues like that from people publishing security tools before. Metasploit is one example: https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit-framework

No im referring to the legal terms of germany, the country im residing at. Our laws regarding "hacking" are arguable the strictest and worst. The problem is that they are formulated in a way that it is super easy to have your software being possible "dual use" and that a judge has to decide if its fine or not. Making it worse it also states your "intention" which well is impossible to proof - if the judge says he doe…

Really? Have there been any cases yet?

I'm asking cuz I started devloping a c2+agent+BOF kind of thing with custom bytecode vm for the lulz (to learn how stuff works nowadays) and it's on tangled and github :/

Re: Show HN: Nightcrawler – A local AI pentesting agent running on a smartphone

#17
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you referring to GitHub policies? I haven’t seen issues like that from people publishing security tools before. Metasploit is one example: https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit-framework

No im referring to the legal terms of germany, the country im residing at. Our laws regarding "hacking" are arguable the strictest and worst. The problem is that they are formulated in a way that it is super easy to have your software being possible "dual use" and that a judge has to decide if its fine or not. Making it worse it also states your "intention" which well is impossible to proof - if the judge says he doe…

Intentions are very often a factor when it comes to law, and rightfully so. The problems come when you classify some category of software as "dangerous" by default. Software is special in that it can't be a "controlled substance". So everyone needs to have the tools to increase their security. That includes access to "offensive tools" to study what they do. A recent example was the Huggingface attack.

Re: Show HN: Nightcrawler – A local AI pentesting agent running on a smartphone

#18
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you referring to GitHub policies? I haven’t seen issues like that from people publishing security tools before. Metasploit is one example: https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit-framework

No im referring to the legal terms of germany, the country im residing at. Our laws regarding "hacking" are arguable the strictest and worst. The problem is that they are formulated in a way that it is super easy to have your software being possible "dual use" and that a judge has to decide if its fine or not. Making it worse it also states your "intention" which well is impossible to proof - if the judge says he doe…

So would it be fair to say this is less about deterministic vs. LLM-driven tools, and more about software published out of New York vs. software published out of Germany?

Re: Show HN: Nightcrawler – A local AI pentesting agent running on a smartphone

#19

The following rant is not against the owner/project - but... What an irony. I cant publish a attack surface mapping / pentesting tool i wrote which runs fully deterministic and really controlable due to "dual use" legal problems - but llm driven tools hit public space...... sorry for the rant....

This is really regrettable. I think the biggest issue is that once such laws or case law are in place, it is really really impossible to repeal them, or to replace them with something more modern. So we're still applying horse laws to cars 100 years later.
Post reply on HN