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. |
