You misunderstand why syshum answered the way he did. GP used the phrase "actual damages" which is a precise term of art in law. Damages have to exist (actual d

You misunderstand why syshum answered the way he did. GP used the phrase "actual damages" which is a precise term of art in law. Damages have to exist (actual damages already suffered, or statutory damages imposed on conduct which has already transpired) to form a basis for a lawsuit -- the law does not concern itself with hypotheticals. Whether or not there could be 'large damage' in the future (your "once I or someone else takes advantage") is irrelevant, immaterial, and only barely actionable. You could seek an injunction to attempt to prevent further potentially-damaging conduct. But you would not be able to claim any actual damages and would generally not be entitled to any form of compensation, not even for the attorney's fees generated in seeking the injunction. As a sibling points out, conspiracy is question of criminal law, not civil law. Furthermore, in almost all jurisdictions within the United States, conspiracy requires at least one of the members of the conspiracy to have actually committed some overt act in furtherance of the crime. It should be impossible to find these researchers guilty of a conspiracy -- even if you claim that introducing hypocrite commits was the overt act, it is already clear that their intention is to academically investigate (and improve, if you're feeling charitable) the state of open-source security. Their actions (introducing hypocrite commits) are not in and of themselves violations of criminal law, so you'd still have to prove that they actually conspired to do something actually criminally illegal as well, e.g. intent to actually damage in some specific way, facilitated by these commits, some specific entity Foo which uses the linux kernel. It's perfectly clear that no such intent existed.