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by yuppiepuppie 477 days ago
What is the definition of distribution? If I posted a code snippet of malware on github or my personal site for educational purposes, does that count as distribution?
2 comments

That depends heavily on the law in question. Germany e.g. almost completely bans white hat activities because hacking is evil, and no amount of common sense has been able to get through lawmakers' thick skulls.
You can downvote him all you want, but it's true at the core. ยง202c of the BGB heavily limits what can be done, even by legit researchers, and it's often being critized for that reason.

For anyone interested, the Wikipedia article might give an overview (only available in German right now): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbereiten_des_Aussp%C3%A4hen...

Really? The malware went from your computer to someone else's and your defense is that it was not "distributed" but just magically moved from A to B?

If you argued that it was clearly labeled as malware for educational purposes, that seems fine. It was distributed, but then distribution is allowed. But this is very clearly not the case here.