>* Alex Eckelberry: > >> But malware researchers routinely deal with botnets for analysis >> purposes. It would be considered a high crime indeed to allow a >spambot >> to actually send spam to the outside world, even for "testing" >purposes. > >I think you've missed the peer-reviewed paper for an ACM conference >where the researchers did exactly that. It's probably not even an >obscure group, I recognized the name of one of the coauthors (and I >usually can't remember names). 8-/
Yes, I missed it. Not sure if the point you're making is to exonerate the BBC or counter my argument. But I'd love to see the document. At any rate, I think everyone agrees that it's unethical to play with a live botnet to send spam, even for research purposes (meaning, you're directing a user's computer to do something without their knowledge and assent, which is fundamentally a bad thing). OTH, we've installed spam zombies on machines here in closed networks for the purpose of analyzing their behavior to design mitigation strategies. The self-generated spam doesn't go anywhere but to another machine in our network. If that's the case with the ACM paper, I don't see anything wrong with that at all. Alex _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
