BBC paid 'a few thousand dollars' for botnet

In a statement on Monday, the BBC said that its decision to purchase and use a botnet to espose the malware epidemic had been "in the public interest".

"It was not our intention to break the law," the BBC told ZDNet UK on Monday. "There is a powerful public interest in demonstrating the ease with which such malware can be obtained and used; how it can be deployed on thousands of infected computers without the owners even knowing it is there; and its power to send spam e mail or attack other websites undetected."

[ ALSO READ: BBC botnet buy: What were they thinking? ]

From the article:

The BBC declined to comment on exactly how much it had cost for the botnet, which criminals it had paid for access to the botnet, or indeed how it had acquired the botnet at all.

However, in the program Click reporter Spencer Kelly said the botnet had cost "a few thousand dollars", and that the BBC had no idea who it had paid.

The BBC added that the "demonstration was very much in the public interest. We believe that as a result of the investigation, general computer users are now better informed of the importance and value of using basic security techniques to defend their PCs from attacks."

Read the full article by Tom Espiner, ZDNet UK [zdnet.co.uk]

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