I am also speechless and in agreement to the above statement, though they did not create this botnet, they stumbled upon the botnet during a cyber crime investigation in an underground hacker forum, yet that is what it is allegedly stated so who can say.

The UK is becoming scary!

Police set to step up hacking of home PCs
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5439604.ece

I think that this is another example of poor choice of words.   Hacking sounds scary, installing keyloggers is something cops do on a day to day basis, including in the USA.   Sniffing wireless and malware are something new, but I think it was only a matter of time. 

In the USA, cops need a warrant to be able to install a keylogger.  Still, it's easy for someone to abuse this.

Regarding testing the waters with a botnet, that's a little silly.  It's really along the same lines of someone breaking into a home just to say that they can.   It doesn't matter if they took anything, it's still break and entering. 

I'm interested to see how this plays out, there should be a police enquiry at the minimum. Funny how they are playing the 'no criminal intent' card, isn't this the same [unsuccessful] defense used by McKinnon? Don't think I can see a difference.

Think I've mentioned in other threads the opportunity found by the Tipping Point team during their analysis of Kraken and resulting debate. Think it says everything that the security researchers hold back on interfering with compromised machines whilst the journalists carry on regardless.

(but uk.gov will never take action against a large corporation, just another transgression in an ever growing list)

What if Gary McKinnon worked for the BBC when he wanted to find out about UFOs? "Don't worry NASA, we were just looking for aliens"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/4977134.stm

Intent doesn't matter. Plain and simple, it was unauthorized access.

Oh, there are some really incompetent lawyers out there. 

Hi Guys,

Could anyone please tell me what the Botnet the BBC was using was called.. Cant seem to find that info any where. Was trying to establish if there was a detection for it by any of the major A/V vendors...


Tom