The BBC bought a botnet and used it to send spam and launch a denial-of-service attack against a site owned by Prevx. The Beeb has released an editor s note to explain and defend the broadcast experiment. It says it was a ‘wake-up call to switch on that firewall and improve our security on the internet’ The BBC was amazed by the ease of use of the botnet, and the power of its disruptive capacity. We think that what we did was a first for broadcast journalism.
Source: https://threatpost.com/bbc-defends-explains-botnet-purchase-032309/72391/