BBC flogs malware

If you or I did this, it would be a felony (a serious one, not a boneheaded one).

BBC Click has admitted paying cybercrooks thousands of dollars to buy access to a botnet as part of a controversial cybercrime investigation, broadcast over the weekend.

...

BBC Click used the botnet of 22,000 machine to send spam to webmail addresses it established and launch a denial of service attack against a test website by security firm PrevX which advised on the investigation. It then changed the wallpaper on compromised machines with a message of its own, advising affected users to clean up.

A hearty shout out to all you folks living in old Blighty - your TV tax license fee funded this.

Let's see: paying thousands of dollars to buy a botnet to make money pimp Viagra spam: bad hacker! No biscuit! Paying thousands of dollars to buy a botnet to make money pimping TV ratings: courageous journalism.

Whatever.