Dive Brief:

• The U.S. Department of Commerce said it will likely revise regulations restricting the export of intrusion software used to hack into smartphones and computers.

• Many saw the revision coming after a barrage of complaints from major technology companies and security specialists.

• An initial draft of the regulations caused many to balk that the rules were broad enough to prevent the sale of standard tools used to test electronic security.

Dive Insight:

Regulation of some sort is necessary under the Wassenaar agreement between 41 countries, which limits the movement of "dual-use" technologies. But the U.S. proposal went further than other countries by including tools for finding software flaws.

Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist at the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology, said he expected the next set of rules to be more narrowly tailored. The original version of the regulations, revealed in May, attracted hundreds of comments.

"All of those comments will be carefully reviewed and distilled, and the authorities will determine how the regulations should be changed," a spokesman for the Commerce Department told Reuters. "A second iteration of this regulation will be promulgated, and you can infer from that that the first one will be withdrawn."