By Dancho Danchev, ZDNet

Earlier this month, the controversial BBC purchase of a botnet and modifying the infected hosts in the name of “public interest” sparked a lot of debate on the pros and cons of their action. Condemned by certain security vendors, and naturally, at least from guerrilla PR perspective, applauded and encouraged as a awareness raising tactic by others, the discussion shifted from technical to moral and legal debate, leaving a single question unanswered - what is the name of the botnet that the BBC rented and what’s so special about it?

Until now. Let’s take a peek inside the BBC “Chimera Botnet” [zdnet.com] offered for rent by a Russian Cybercrime-as-a-service (CaaS) vendor.