BBC fails to understand mens rea

[Charles Lindsey]

On Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:10:26 -0000, Richard Clayton  
<richard@highwayman.com> wrote:

> ... he goes on to point out it's not just a matter of legality, but also
> that when things go wrong on some machines (as is almost inevitable)
> then there is always potential for damage caused by the clean-up
> operation itself.

But I suspect they were being over-squeamish. it is not necessary to  
eliminate the bot entirely (which would require every file that was part  
of the bot, or that the bot had modified, and cleaning up the registry) -  
merely to disbale some crucial element of it.

Moreover, an alternative would be to inform the owners of the infected  
machines, perhaps by overlaying their screensavers as the BBC did. It  
would be much harder to screw up some simple task like that.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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