Mastercard problems

Thu Dec 9 09:37:55 UTC 2010

On 08/12/2010 20:42, Jack Bates wrote:
> Of course, it's debatable if use of LOIC is enough to convict. You'd
> have to first prove the person installed it themselves, and then you'd
> have to prove that they knew it would be used for illegal purposes.

Earlier this morning there were two people interviewed on the BBC radio 
4 Today program (this is considered the BBC's flagship morning 
news/current affairs show on their serious nationwide talk radio 
station) about this - one was a security consultant and another was a 
member of/spokesman for the 'operation payback' group.  One wonders why 
the Met Police didn't have someone waiting to have a quiet chat with the 
latter when he left the studio.

Both of them said that people had been voluntarily downloading and 
installing botnet clients on their PCs in order to take part in these 
DDoS attacks.  Ignoring, for a moment, the stupidity of such action it 
is hard to see how you'd be able to argue that this was *not* going to 
be used for illegal purposes.

The other amusing part of the interview was when the security consultant 
started off very well explaining a DDoS in layman's terms, but then 
veered off using the terms HTTP, UDP and IP in one sentence causing the 
presenter to intervene as it "was getting a tad too technical there".

Paul.