Selling trojans semi-ligitimately is still a bad idea...

[¤The¤Spe©ialist]

But by selling this software for these explicit reasons, that also gives him liability. If I create a trojan and stick it on my website for anyone to download with the explicit knowledge it is a trojan and is for research purposes only.....that is one thing. If I SELL YOU the trojan for the explicit purpose of using it as such....that is an entirely different thing.

And agian for about the third or fourth time in a row... I seriously doubt thats it.

[Katja]

So, (my last remark about this topic and then it can die) what if I put a trojan on my webpage and sell it for research purposes only? I would be making a profit of this tool, yet I offer it for research purposes only.
Say that I write the code for a very fast-spreading trojan that is able to abuse an exploit that hasn't been fixed yet. If that thing would be released in the wild, it would infect lots and lots of systems. If I would then offer the sourcecode of this virus for sale to anyone who wants to research this new exploit, would I still commit a crime or am I allowed to do this because it's meant for research purposes only? What if someone buys this research code and then uses it to generate a virus that's starts running in the wild, bringing down millions of computers and causing billions of dollars of damages in lost data...
Would I be responsible for that or the person who released the virus?

Or better. I discover a way to exploit Windows and publish this information. People will have to pay to see this information. Someone pays and then uses my information to make an exploit which is then used. My fault? Or not?

[Juridian]

Erm, I think you are confusing a trojan with a worm. And if you offer up the code on your website in it's entirety and it is released in the wild, you damn well better have proof that it wasn't you because law enforcement is probably going to pay a visit. Your liability in the matter after that is up to the courts to decide.

[¤The¤Spe©ialist]

Beast's source and plugins where sold, the author also claimed that for the right price you'd get new functionality to an undetectable variant. Netdevil or whatever the name is... a version of that was sold as a commercial product. BO plugins have been sold.

Gaobot and SDbot had a GPL for **** sakes...

GT(-ish) bots basicly consist of nothing more than commercial software, scripts to make the program do what you want, and a few registry entries for startup and to register the program... the only thing really considered to be malware is the wrapper that compresses/drops all this ****. They are often commercial software also.

[¤The¤Spe©ialist]

Erm, I think you are confusing a trojan with a worm.

Uh yeah so an auto-rooting feature would classify almost every bot out there a worm.

Pffft... STFU.

[nihil]

my last remark about this topic and then it can die

I am sure that Juridian is honoured by your condescension to let his thread die, I just know that I would be

Might I suggest that you try out your suggestions and find out the answer by pure research?

I am sorry that I did not realise that this forum was being run for your convenience