Be careful what you joke about at the water cooler in Germany these days — even a dig about a password stuck to a PC monitor could be considered breaking a new anti-hacker law that went into effect this month. Under the new law, such a joke could be construed as making the password “accessible.” If a customer tells a sales clerk at a German office supply store that he’s going to use his newly-purchased Windows XP software to hack into a bank, the clerk could get busted for selling him the OS. These are the types of extreme scenarios being playe d out over and over by German security vendors and researchers who are still trying to figure out just what the controversial new Section 202c StGB of the country’s computer crime laws really means to their business and their research. Many security people say the law is so flawed and so broad and that no one can really comply with it.