Libre Office and Wireshark, macchanger...

When dealing with wireshark and macchanger you may want to review the legalities of those tools being included with a distribution. As far as I know no Linux offers those at installation time as their nature is that of network hacking tools.

Wireshark has lots of legitimate applications and is legal to use and distribute.

mcchanger changes your mac address it does not necessarily mean you are hacking with it. A perfect example would be a kitchen knife. It can be used to stab someone or simply cook dinner. Same thing goes for wireshark. Even scripts/code meant to crack passwords etc. are legitimate as they are meant for auditing. If it was illegal then nobody would hire a network auditor as there would not be such a profession in existance. For example I use backtrack not because i like the ubuntu/debain system but simply because it comes preinstalled with all the auditing suites. I would prefer to not use bt at all and just stick to slackware if it had its own customized auditing suite of preselected packages.

Depends on the country you live in. In some countries it is not legal to distribute tools that can be used for hacking purposes.

In that case "ssh" should be illegal

Or dd. I could use it to make a copy of someone's hard disk for inspection later. Seriously, where do they draw the line with these laws?

Well, except for BackTrack and other penetration testing distros...

It is illegal to hack someone else without their knowledge or approval. Of course, if you are doing penetration testing on your own servers, it's perfectly legal.

I do keep macchanger around even though you can change your mac with ifconfig, because it is useful when connecting to open wifi.

and even if it was "illegal"... I highly doubt that a country with such backwards laws is going to raid your place for downloading a Slackware CD. I mean I can imagine the backwardsness of such a country and I highly doubt they go door to door arresting people that own network auditing software on their harddrive. LOL

Its kind of like "Jay walking" in the USA. Yea, there is a law against Jay Walking... But most american's still break the law and Jay walk in front of a Police Officer and get away with it.
Or the Seatbelt law. I have not had 1 cop pull me over for my seatbelt unless I was speeding and he added the seatbelt ticket to it.

Meanwhile, in Syria people are getting shot up door to door legally... I mean this world is just an UNLOGICAL Place for a few Logical people to live in.

But all jokes aside, I doubt it will be added to the CD instead of all the different text editors like emacs that I don't ever touch... But I guess thats just my personal problem to deal with.

I hope they don't get away with it. Just come to Eastern Europe where there are no laws and see why it is a problem.

In all honesty... I actually agree on the Jay walking after thinking about it LOL

But the network auditing software being illegal... that is just backwards. You have to agree with me on that.

We use wireshark extensively at work ... I'd say that most anyone who develops software which uses network sockets will wind up using something similar if not wireshark per se.

Really, wireshark doesn't increase the abilities of the distro; it just makes analysis of captures easier ... tcpdump already technically gives you the ability to take and analyze captures.

EDIT: It'd also be useful for anyone working in telecommunications, as it can not only break down IP captures, but SS7, sigtran, etc.

They draw the line where tools are developed as the "main purpose" to be for hacking/security testing. Is that illogical? Yes. Does being illogical suddenly make it legal? No.
By the way, one of those countries with these backwards laws is Germany.
Just to give you an overview, it is illegal to even download these tools in Germany: Aircrack-ng, Cain & Abel, Offline NT PW & Registry Editor, Ophcrack, Wireshark, all kinds of software that is able to circumvent copy-protection (yes, officially libdvdcss is illegal here), John the Ripper, ... .
That nobody knocks on your door doesn't make it legal.

Hmm... maybe that can cause a loophole in your favor? Is it illegal to download a Linux Distro that happen to have network auditing tools? As long as you don't install the packages it should be legal right?
There seems to be a lot of Grey area on this subject.

With the same anology as ssh and dd. I mean backtrack[Sorry I meant Slackware not Backtrack typo] is a linux distro and its purpose is not for hacking purposes. As a matter of fact even Suse (german) is built upon Slackware. So that will ruin the entire company and I don't think Germans would be too happy with that. So if it is legal to use ssh in Germany and it is legal to use Slackware in Germany then adding auditing tools (optionally) to slackware should not cause a problem. Right?

As I stated, the download is illegal.

Neither SSH nor dd are developed with the intention of being tools that can be used for hacking/sniffing/cracking. Wireshark is, Aircrack-ng is, ... .

BackTrack is a distro specifically designed as a tool for penetration testing. Penetration testing is hacking, no matter if you do it legally or not.

As a matter of fact, Suse is independent from Slackware since S.u.S.E Linux 4.2 (released 1996), which used jurix, a distro made from one of the developers that later built Yast, as a starting point. Also, Suse was bought by Novell in 2004 and is now owned by the Attachmate Group, it is not a German company anymore.

This is your opinion (and mine also, despite the fact that SSH is not a hacking tool). Fact is, neither your nor my opinion change the laws and make it legal.