, 2006-04-18
Botnets are a major source of evil on the Internet, from spam, phishing attacks, virus propagation and denial-of-service attacks to the stealing of financial information and other illegal activity. Does disbanding them raise legal and ethical implications?
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"Source" of evil?
2006-04-18
Matthew Murphy (1 replies)
Matthew Murphy (1 replies)
Stop the bots
2006-04-18
Anonymous (4 replies)
Anonymous (4 replies)
Re: Stop the bots
2006-04-18
Anonymous (1 replies)
Anonymous (1 replies)
Second; No.
Compare: You can probably patent a harmful drug (thereby gaining legal protection for it from compeditors) but they are STILL harmful drugs, making them will make cops come and bash your skull in with a heavy nightstick if it should become available.
If the user "accepts" (probably by using a very long and complicated license agreement) and runs the software on the computer, the software connects to other computers and do harm.
(Whatever license agreement that exists between the license owner and license taker will not change the nature of the code; it is hostile.)
The user did most likely not have the intent of installing a nasty piece of code on his/her computer that connects to everything from (insignificant) home users to large government organisations and cause IDS systems to fire up like christmas trees.
Btw, Mudge mentioned this years ago in a speech @ Blackhat Briefings and (jokingly?) said that he was going to start write viruses if it would become criminal for, say, Symantec and the rest to analyse the binary code.
I heard from a friend that in the UK that they have legal provisions in their copyright law that allows the end user to analyse any invasive program that runs on the computer.
In my country, i have the right to analyse any binary on my box that i have bought a license for, no matter what the "pull down your pants and bend over"-license agreement say.
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Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/columns/398/33543#33543