Computer Hope
Other => Computer News => Topic started by: Computer Hope Admin on March 13, 2009, 12:20:59 AM
-
The BBC has deliberately hacked into 22,000 PCs to prove the power of botnets, and the damage that can be done with a network of compromised computers.
Click – BBC News' technology programme – with the help of anti-virus company Prevx, took over thousands of computers in order to demonstrate a growing problem in the modern world.
Link (http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/bbc-hacks-into-thousands-of-pcs-581906)
-
lol, and i quote' "If this exercise had been done with criminal intent it would be breaking the law'
So i can hack computers, and just say i wasn't criminally intending anything? lloll
stupid BBC, think their above everyone else...
-
Yeah I thought the same thing. Personally I think this should be considered against the law even if they were trying to prove a point and didn't do anything malicious.
-
I've always secretly liked Prevx. Not so sure now though...
Guess they would agree it's OK to lock pick a few cars, homes and businesses just so they can say they did it ::)
-
The BBC did a great public service by showing the public how easy it is to be compromised. Now maybe people will start to get good antivirus protection.
-
The BBC did a great public service by showing the public how easy it is to be compromised. Now maybe people will start to get good antivirus protection.
lol
not me.
-
lol
not me.
Well would you like to hear that from the BBC and you go get a good antivirus and wow your computer speeds up. He may laugh out loud but i think the law can be be bent to help the people. last i cheeked the BBC did not spam any one and after thy were done they then destroyed it. So you can laugh all you wont but how much did you know about bot nets before you saw the story.
-
Well would you like to hear that from the BBC and you go get a good antivirus and wow your computer speeds up.
quite the opposite; without the additional burden of Anti-virus software in the background everything is smooth sailing.
Additionally I have typically around 25 processes running at a time, which is far less then average, which from what I can tell seems to be about 40 to 50.
He may laugh out loud but i think the law can be be bent to help the people.
Once you add Context sensitive exceptions to a law you also add loopholes. Now a malicious person would simply need to prove that they meet those context sensitive changes to the law and fit through the loophole; which, considering they have full access to the object whose security was breached, they could easily touch logs and so forth to prove their case of "benign intrusion".
last i cheeked the BBC did not spam any one and after thy were done they then destroyed it. So you can laugh all you wont but how much did you know about bot nets before you saw the story.
a bot net is a group of zombie computers under the control of a single person or program. The "zombie" pcs generally receive their commands via IRC channels, typical uses for bot nets are for Distributed Denial of Service attacks, but others can try to reap profit by mining data from the PCs in question as well, since the IRC command set implemented by the program generally includes the ability to upload/download files to/from the zombie PC and execute those programs.
The fact is, regardless of who did it, it was illegal- people had their PCs compromised and running software that they didn't know about, that collected data about them, perhaps private data, and sent it back to the BBC where it was supposedly destroyed after the experiment. Again- if we were to add a Context sensitive exception to the law like "oh, yeah but if it's D00ds that mean good then that's kewl" (obviously would require translation to lawyer speak), those with malicious intent can easily squeeze through the loophole.
-
I would like to add that those computers were already controlled by the bots when the BBC acquired the bot net. Who would you rather have: a hacker trying to get your personal information acquiring possession of the bot on your PC, or a News organization that showed how powerful a bot net can be... and then destroying that spy ware on your computer? Most computer users are not computer savvy, so for most of them getting rid of all the spy ware on their machine and installing an up to date anti-virus program really does speed up the performance of their computer (depending on the AV that is...) So the actuality of it is that the BBC did not hack into the computers, it was already done for them. Although I would say that creating your own bot and having people download it for the purpose of the experiment would have probably been a better choice, although those people who had their computer hacked might have been in more serious trouble if a hacker had bought their computer as part of the bot net. For me, this is a gray area...
-
Still BBC should be taken to court.
-
I don't think so- as was said they did nothing malicious. It isn't right per se, but as tux2 said it they really just acquired the bot net and recorded some stats.
I'm really not against it- what I'm against is the attitude, that if somebody is doing something for "good" (which can only be ill-defined at best- good for whom?), then they should be above the law. It's this very mindset that allows governments to trample on the rights they were setup to protect. no need to explain, just say, "it's for good reasons" is enough for some to accept it, without realizing the connotations.
Of course in this instance there really weren't any connotations- except that in the end all the PCs were released from the botnet. Which I'm sure nobody will argue is a good thing.
-
But the BBC just did something that is real idiotic on showing how the Bot Net can be used to hack comps....and hackers are probably reading that article about to do the same.
-
and hackers are probably reading that article about to do the same.
I highly doubt any information the bbc gave about it is technical enough to reproduce. They had to naivefy it for thier populace.
-
still the hackers would find a way since they atleast know that its bot net that they're gonna use to hack with.
-
still the hackers would find a way since they atleast know that its bot net that they're gonna use to hack with.
well, it would be hard working with little to no information, almost impossible?
-
Hackers have no lives...they have all the time in the world ;)
-
umm... yeah, and I'm pretty sure their are better documents out there about how to create a botnet then a transcript of a BBC newscast...
-
oh well....they would find a way..
-
yeah- like one of the better documents.