The botnet for BBC investigation was bought from hackers in Russia and Ukraine

Last week in our journal we posted a report about unusual investigation that had been conducted by the BBC. While the company claims that it violated no law a number of experts and lawyers disputed that view and said such methods when users’ computers were compromised by BBC Click without their permission creates a precedent of disregard for the legislation. According to the most recent data the broadcasting company used the botnet system it bought from the hackers in Russia and the Ukraine.

BBC Click reporter Spencer Kelly explained that licence fee payers' money was used to buy access to virus-infected machines under the control of hackers in Russia and the Ukraine. He said that after “months of investigation and a few thousand dollars, we had managed to buy a botnet from hackers in Russia and the Ukraine.”

In order to get in touch with the cyber criminals BBC team turned to chatrooms where hackers advertise their services. The BBC team needed first to “earn their confidence, then negotiations take place in instant messaging applications.”

“Once a service and a price have been agreed, payment is made using a money transfer to keep both sides anonymous.”

BBC bought a botnet of 22,000 machine to send spam to webmail addresses it established and launch a denial of service attack against a test website by security firm PrevX which advised on the investigation. It then changed the wallpaper on compromised machines with a message of its own, advising affected users to clean up.