Journal: Debuging is illegal in France ?

French security expert Guillaume Tena, also known as Guillermito, has lost his appeal against Tegam, the french company that distributed the Viguard "antiviral firewall". The main charge retained by the court (french) is that using a debuger or a disassembler for other purpose than interoperatibility is prohibited in France. Tena actually used such tools to demonstrate several flaws in the Viguard security software, and the fact that he published his results on his website have been considered as an aggravating circumnstance in his case. This story has already been discussed on Slashdot. Guillermito now has to pay a 15000 euro fine to Tegam and to Eyal Dotan, that conceived the Viguard software. Although raising funds for paying a fine is prohibited by french laws Guillaume will accept donations through paypal to "help him buy a good antivirus". At the time of this writing he already collected almost 10000 euros.