FBI says its malware isn't malware because 'we're the good guys'

(From last July 2016)

Another tale from the 'twisted and illogical' department...

The FBI does 'not believe' that the hacking tools it uses to break into computers of suspected criminals should be considered 'malware,' because it says they're used with good intentions.

In the court filing, first spotted by Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, the FBI said that its hacking tools, so-called network investigative techniques (NIT), are not 'malicious.'

The legal brief written by the FBI last week said that: "A reasonable person or society would not interpret the actions taken by a law enforcement officer pursuant to a court order to be malicious.'

'For that reason I do not believe that the NIT utilized in this case pursuant to a court order should be considered to be malware," it added.

The case centers on Operation Playpen, which stirred controversy when it was revealed that federal agents had secretly broken into the child porn site and ran it from a government server. That was when agents destroyed its hacking tools to identify the site's users by exploiting a flaw in the Tor browser, use to access the anonymity network.

The FBI refused to deliver how the Tor exploit worked, so the judge tossed out the evidence. 

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