I get what you are saying and you feel but some of the terms you used here are not the right ones. Saying booting is hacking is not right. Hacking has nothing to do with booting. Hacking is not a proper term either but now mostly accepted by people to mean breaking into someone's system. Booting has nothing to do with breaking into someone system. Booting is more to do with interruption or denial of service. Yes interruption is illegal since there has been changes to the Computer Misuse Act 1990 in 2004. Since there is a law that is out there to protect computer users online from malicious attackers who are out there to interrupt their computer or network.

You say programs are illegal. Since when did they become illegal. Sometimes a software that is used for malicious purpose can have legitimate uses in other situation. So the use of illegal program isn't a proper term but i know what your saying even though you haven't phrased it right. You can only get into trouble if you use a program to gain unauthorised access to someone's computer. Since it is breaking one of the computer law that was past out in 1990.

However even though there are laws in place, the problem is trying to catch the person who is causing all the problems. There is no system on the internet to prove someone's identity. So the offender who causing all the problem on yahoo messenger annoyying the other users in the chatrooms seem to always get away with it. Even with the introduction of digital signature and digital certificate they haven't been widely used everywhere by everyone. If it has been then it can be used to identify the attacker. Don't forget IP is based on trust. So we tend to identify each computer used by a user with an IP address. However an IP address can be forged in the header in email etc. Probably by now there are measures in place to reduce email spoofing.

Don't forget Yahoo itself says this whenever you install yahoo messenger:

"You also understand that Yahoo! is not responsible for the security or privacy of communications sent via the Service, including but not limited to where the Service is being accessed via wireless devices or other equipment used to access the Service."

So it means that if a hacker intercepted your communication then yahoo is not responsible for the disclosure of that information that was intercepted. It's your choice or not whether to use it. So i guess use it at your own risk.

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Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/articles/254/34316#34316