BBC hacks into thousands of PCs

My name is URL

"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."

http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/bbc-hacks-into-thousands-of-pcs-581906

Should be an interesting show!

kaimera

aye, had a read of the 'click' page there today.

interesting stuff but seriously, plebs who don't do the basics. How many of them prolly have no SPs or any updates.

Martyr

How many of them prolly have no SPs or any updates.

those systems probably use cracked copies of windows.

its hard to blame the owner, especially when there are so many cowboys in the IT market, selling over-priced hardware with cracked software installed.

the users aren't actually aware of the software being cracked because they're usually told otherwise by the seller.

My name is URL

It's not just down to cracked OS's or poorly maintained updates though, the amount of crapware going around that people actually download without hesitation is laughable. All it takes is a few lines of hidden code in a program and a users PC instantly becomes an on-call-zombie. And the malicious behavior can run so silently that there's no way a casual user would even know. It's especially the case for botnets used for DDos-ing, if the Master sends out a target IP and the Zombies start to ping it, there's really no way to tell unless you know a bit about networking.

JimmyCrackCorn!

Shooting fish in a barrel.

Time for a large dose of sensationalist crap. :rolleyes:

Hypothetically::If you wanted to repeat there experiment i could throw something together that was effective in about 4 hours with a long break for tea and biscutes and some youtube videos of dancing cats. (so could any script kiddy) (I also have no intention as i like my freedom and im not a fan of jail love)


If someone wants to legally see what botnets are active deploy nepenthes http://nepenthes.carnivore.it/ in a locked down virtual machine on a DMZ.

Youll be very surprised when you see what ancient exploits are still effective to this day.

harney

When I first read this the other day it did seem a bit dubious from a legal point of view. They (BBC) were illegally accessing someone’s system and using their bandwidth.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/security/bbc-cybercrime-probe-backfires/2009/03/13/1236447465056.html

I am sure nothing will come of it, but I would love to know how the legal experts decided that there wasn't any potential of this blowing up badly in their faces (not saying it has, but it has the potential).

_CreeD_

Aye they should be prosecuted, it'd be no different to them breaking into people's homes to prove their locks are crap. Does it make a difference if they didn't actually steal anything?

DonkeyStyle \o/

_CreeD_ wrote: »

it'd be no different to them breaking into people's homes to prove their locks are crap.

I'd watch that show... put together a proposal. :pac:
Jeremy Clarkson and Ross Kemp to host.

BaconZombie

They do similar things on the "real hustle" that normal people would get arrested and charged for doing....

_CreeD_ wrote: »

Aye they should be prosecuted, it'd be no different to them breaking into people's homes to prove their locks are crap. Does it make a difference if they didn't actually steal anything?