BUSTED: World's largest spam operation

[Koolan]

Good riddance. I read that a person spends an average of 2.8 minutes each day to delete spam emails.

 

FTC busts 'world's largest spam operation'

Group e-mailed promotions for prescription drugs, 'male enhancement' pills

 

updated 12:53 p.m. ET, Tues., Oct. 14, 2008

 

CHICAGO - Federal authorities in Chicago say they've shut down one of the largest spam e-mail operations in the world. The Federal Trade Commission says the group generated e-mails promoting sales of prescription drugs and "male enhancement" pills.

 

The FTC says authorities closed the operation by working with their counterparts in New Zealand.

 

The FTC plans to provide more details at a news conference in Chicago later in the day.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27181745/

 

 

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/_spam400.jpg

Steve Baker, director of the Midwest region of the Federal Trade Commission. (Chicago Tribune photo by José M. Osorio)

 

The Federal Trade Commission said today that it has busted a global spam network responsible for sending billions of illegal messages encouraging consumers to buy unsafe male-enhancement and weight loss pills.

 

The FTC asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois to issue a temporary _2spam200.jpginjunction against two men in New Zealand and Texas, prohibiting them from sending spam and making false product claims. The court also froze their assets, which may eventually be returned to consumers who bought the drugs. Authorities in New Zealand are pressing their own case against the New Zealand man's brother, who is also accused of participating in the spam operation.

 

The FTC said it received more than three million complaints about spam related to the network. Officials are still tallying the sales volume, but estimate that the spammers' take was in the millions of dollars.

The spam network, which processed credit card information in Cyprus and Georgia, used servers in China to host its Web sites and also employed a "botnet," which is a network of computers--including ones in ordinary homes--that are hijacked to send spam.

 

The FTC said the botnet used by this operation compromised tens of thousands of computers around the world and was capable of sending up to 10 billion spam messages per day. The drugs came from China and India. The FTC, which handles the civil aspect of illegal spam cases, is working with the FBI but couldn't comment on the likelihood of criminal charges.

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2008/10...-operation.html

[Libeck528]

Yay!!!

[Edwin]

Wow, I'm surprised they they had actual products to sell. Just compensating the people who bought those drugs isn't good enough. They need to reimburse the ISPs (at the very least) whose resources were wasted in sending/receiving this crap. And hopefully they in turn can give their subscribers some kind of discount to pass on that reimbursement. Oke, that is totally not going to happen, but that would be great.

[ErwinG]

thats great news ... yay

[Prince Whiskers]

enhancement pills....yeah riiiiiiiiiiight

[celinerific]

Oh thank God! I've been get SOOOOOO many of those e-mails! Finally! Edited October 15, 2008 at 08:23 PM by celinerific

[Krikkete]

I receive a hundred of messagges with the purpose of selling me Blue Pills, Rolex, Software and so on everyday....

Well, actually, I don't think I need those blue pills because I'm a woman, and I have nothing to enlarge :P

 

[stevethefan]

Did they at least fry and eat the SPAM when they were done.

 

Oh you mean the E-MAIL Spam!

[Edwin]

ISP McColo Shut Down After Connection Found To Spammers

ISP McColo was taken offline Tuesday by its upstream ISP after a research report by several security vendors alleged McColo helped cybercriminals promote spam, online fraud and child pornography.

McColo has been tracked for years by Internet security researchers, who have suspected the ISP of hosting spam and Web sites of cybercriminals known as phishers -- cybercriminals who distribute malware by claiming to offer everything from herbal remedies to celebrity videos.

 

McColo's termination followed closely on the heels of an incendiary report released by researchers from numerous security organizations and companies, including McAfee, Trend Micro and Arbor Networks, detailing shady criminal practices of ISPs like McColo and their connection with spam and cybercrime.

 

ISPs can connect with each other to exchange Internet traffic in what is known as peering. McColo was booted offline Tuesday night when upstream ISP Hurricane Electric disconnected from McColo, leaving it without a huge portion of its Internet traffic.

 

"They're obviously doing bad things online and we don't want that on our network," said Benny Ng, director of infrastructure for Hurricane Electric.

 

Ng added that Hurricane Electric has no plans to reinstate McColo's Internet privileges, but said he might give them another chance if they could clean up their act and prove they were legitimate.

 

Security experts said that McColo was an integral link in a chain of connectivity that hosted a slew of cybercriminal activity, such as spam, botnets, pornography and malware distribution, while some even speculated that the ISP was responsible for as much as half the world's spam.

 

Meanwhile, the report mentions that McColo hosted command and control servers for some of the world's biggest botnets -- incorporated networks of infected computers under the control of a remote attacker or cybercrime group. In one example, the report states that the Sinowal Trojan virus tracked by security company RSA was found to have originated from a McColo IP address. RSA researchers ultimately found that the Sinowal malware was responsible for the theft of about 500,000 online bank account and credit and debit card numbers.

 

Consequently, security researchers noticed a significant drop in the level of spam immediately following the McColo shutdown Tuesday night.

 

In particular, researchers at IronPort/Cisco (NSDQ:CSCO) say they saw global spam levels drop at least 60 percent -- from 190 billion spam messages to 112 billion spam message per day -- following Tuesday's shutdown.

 

"Usually this time of year we're talking about spam spikes. This time we're excited to find a temporary reprieve," said Nilesh Bhandari, product manager with IronPort/Cisco.

 

But just how temporary a reprieve remains in question. Bhandari said that spam levels will likely return to their normal levels within a matter of days to weeks as other ISPs step in to fill the gap left by McColo's temporary vacancy.

 

"McColo will find another provider," Bhandari said. "They'll most likely move their command and control center offshore and go someplace where it's less likely to be analyzed closely."

 

"Unfortunately, spam volumes are likely going to return to the high levels of the holiday season. This is big business," he added.

 

The McColo shutdown also comes just two months after network provider Intercage, which was found to host copious spam, malware and other fraudulent activity, was disconnected by its providers. As in the case of McColo, Intercage's takedown created a brief decline in the amount of spam around the globe. However, volumes returned to their normal levels as cybercriminals regrouped and found other providers.

 

"When [iSP] Atrivo was de-peered, the world saw a brief drop in the output of spam. If McColo were ever to suffer the same fate, worldwide spam output would probably be cut in half," the report states.

 

Meanwhile, security experts say that cybercrime's proliferation is primarily due to the fact that it requires practically no overhead, is extremely lucrative and is relatively risk-free.

 

"By whacking their host and making them move from time to time, all of a sudden they can't do any of the work and development that they normally do," said John Bambenek, SANS Internet Storm Center handler. "We need to be looking at some of these techniques and make them react to changes that we're doing. We need to find a part business solution and part technological solution that slows them down, increases their cost and reduces their profitability."

 

Bambenek also contended that while spam volumes might soon increase in the short term, the serial ISP shutdowns indicate a trend of plummeting tolerance that IT security administrators have not just for spammers, but for the infrastructure that enables them.

 

"What we're seeing is a lot of self-regulation. It's not the public per se. It's more or less the information security community and IT community in general," Bambenek said. "A lot of people are tired of those costs being foisted on the general public and they're pushing back. In that sense, it's an economic market response to a situation."

This is an ISP that most security companies attribute about 2/3 of the spam that we receive. Not to mention the other illegal, malicious activities (viruses, malwares, botnets, etc) that they knowingly and willingly allowed to happen on their servers!! GOOD RIDDANCE!

Edited November 19, 2008 at 11:29 PM by Edwin