The BBC is running a story about just how easy it is for hackers to install and manage a botnet. The problem is that they used unsuspecting users computers to demonstrate it! The BBC story goes on to include that this was not an illegal act because :
“If this exercise had been done with criminal intent it would be breaking the law.”
I can’t imagine a more asinine statement. It’s a little more than intent, what about the stolen bandwidth, CPU cycles, and electricity? What about the time spent by System Administrators removing this from their systems. What about the risk of someone else taking over the botnet and ‘upgrading’ the code?
These folks need to be taken to jail.