meh37
@verizon.net | reply to birdfeedr
Re: Scientists should be prosecuted for 350 million spam msgs
What if the 28 hits were just other researchers researching spammer websites? |
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birdfeedr
Premium,MVM
join:2001-08-11
Warwick, RI
 ·Verizon FIOS
| reply to Sock Puppet
Thanks for the link. Reading it, it appears that the researchers did not use the botnet to send spams. Instead they hijacked a small enough number of nodes to change the spams that were already going out (under someone else's direction, so charge them with malfeasance, if you can find them). Instead they were re-directed to the researcher's fake pharmaceutical website. The fake pharmaceutical website worked up to the point of checking out, so there were no personal or financial details invloved.
The spams which, when clicked, would have infected the users with malware, redirected the click-ers to a website that merely counted hits.
None of the above by the researchers is actionable. And trying to get a handle on the spam scourge by understanding some of the dynamics is within the realm of ethical. |
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Sock Puppet
Premium
join:2000-10-09
Parker, CO
| reply to AnonDuffer
They never actually sold anything, they stopped short of doing so as the article conviently left that out:
This article has more detail:
»voices.washingtonpost.com/securi···_at.html
To this point no one has been successful in stopping spam. It seems like the next logical step is getting in the spamers minds and determining their distribution avenues and success rates. If ultimately their research can be used to help stop spam, I personally do not care that I got one extra spam, with a link that I would have never clicked anyway, going to a site where you actually could not purchase anything. |
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