Intellectual Property Law

What's the most powerful weapon you can wield when playing Halo 3 online?

I know. You can control the entire map with a battle rifle and a couple of sticky grenades. But that teeny-bopper you just pwned has you beat with the tiny botnet he leased with his allowance money.

That's because Xbox Live gamers are increasingly turning to easy-to-use botnet software with names like "Bio Zombie Booter" to exact lingering revenge on their online foes, reports Christopher Boyd at SpyWareGuide.com.

Several programs available online,  accompanied by YouTube tutorials, make it easy to sniff out your opponent's IP address, then aim a few dozen zombie machines at him in a distributed denial-of-service attack.

Steal my flag, will you? Enjoy being offline for the rest of the night, newb.

The cyberwar tactic has been an underground Halo 3 phenomenon for a while ? complaints of DDoSing abound on gamemaker Bungie's community forum. But now the botnets are "quickly becoming mainstream," Boyd reports. The control software is free, but the entrepreneurial spoilsports behind it sometimes lease the bots for about $2 per zombie. Forty to 60 zombies are recommended to get a decent DDoS going against your enemy's Xbox 360.

Of course, the potential market for this malware is limited to those gamers who take Halo so seriously that they'll commit a felony over it ? say, 500,000 or so.