"The BBC hacked into 22,000 computers as part of an investigation
into cybercrime but the move quickly backfired, with legal experts
claiming the broadcaster broke the law and security gurus saying
the experiment went too far.
The technology show Click acquired a network of 22,000 hijacked
computers – known as a botnet – and ordered the infected machines
to send out spam messages to test email addresses and attack a
website, with permission, by bombarding it with requests.
Click also modified the infected computers' desktop
wallpaper.
"Within hours, the inboxes started to fill up with thousands of
junk messages," the BBC wrote on its website.
Of the website attack, the BBC boasted: "Amazingly, it took only
60 machines to overload the site's bandwidth.""
