New research lab has license to spy

By PETER GRIFFIN

With international partnerships and a new laboratory in place, researchers at Waikato University are expanding their work into computer networks - while making sure they do not run foul of proposed anti-hacking legislation.

The university's Department of Computer Science has opened Wand (Waikato Applied Network Dynamics), a laboratory that snoops on networks to measure their performance and detect denial of service (Dos) attacks.

The bulk of the lab's research involves "passive internet measurement", attaching a listening device to a network cable to record passing traffic and determine line usage.

That would be enough to land you on the wrong side of the law under section 253, clause 1, of the proposed Crimes Amendment Bill (No. 6), were it not for a key word - "authorisation".

Senior lecturer Dr Tony McGregor said the unit "listened in" on networks to determine ways to improve performance and save the owners money on broadband charges, but with the owners' approval.

"Equivalent legislation overseas usually has an out for the owner of the network to gather information for management purposes," he said.

"And we collect outside information about where a network packet is heading, where it has come from and what kind of data it is, not the actual data itself."

The monitoring technology used by Wand is widely available overseas, but used locally only by large telcos for monitoring network performance.

But the researchers have developed their own proprietary technology - "Dag" cards, which allow them to collect information from the "header traces" on packets of information sent across networks at up to 2.5Gbps, 44,000 times faster than a 56Kbps dial-up modem.

The university has formed partnerships with US researchers CAIDA (Cooperative Association for International Data Analysis) and NLANR (National Laboratory for Applied Network Research), which measures the performance of the major networks crossing the US.

National Laboratory for Applied Network Research