Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[kitz]

One of the worlds largest companies responsible for email spam got took offline on the 11th of Nov.
McColo is said to be responsible for the co-ordination of sending out approximately 75% of email spam each day.

E-mail spam worldwide is recorded to have dropped by approx 66% on Tuesday after McColo had the plug pulled on their Hosting.



McColo is a large company responsible for web hosting and serves much of the counterfeit pharmaceutical and child pornography industry and has its mucky fingers in many pies:

• Hosting for pharma Domains
• Rogue Security Software (Fake AV Removal /Protection/nags)
• Child Pornography Websites
• Controller Servers for Rootkits + Keyloggers said to be responsible for stealing band + credit accounts.

They are also involved in

• Botnet Controllers
• Pharmacy Payment Sites
• Proxy/Anonymisation Services.

Original source:- Guardian. However theres a lot more info from the Washington Post who recorded the events as they happened and has several articles on the topic.

11th Nov
Major Source of Online Scams and Spams Knocked Offline

12th Nov
Spam Volumes Drop by Two-Thirds After Firm Goes Offline
Internet Spam Groups Is Cut Off

13th Nov
Report about and comments from McColos access providers.
A closer look at McColo



------------------


Its been rather an eventful week this week with regards to Spam news hasnt it?

Mon 10th - Article released on how research had been undertaken to study how these organisations worked.
Tue 11th - Worlds largest email spam oganisations have the plugs pulled on their servers, and email spam drops worldwide immediately drops dramatically.
Then.. the very same day many forums report massive spam attacks and a 'tidal wave' of forum spam, from bot activity which hit its peak on Wednesday and is still ongoing. :/

[Floydoid]

I've seen the reports on that Kitz, nice work, but no doubt they will spring up again elsewhere, probably in the old Soviet bloc where there is less regulation.

[roseway]

You're probably right Floydy, but it's terrific news all the same, because it shows that there are some influential organisations around the world which will take hard action against spammers (which is more than most governments will do).

[guest]

Rather more importantly (and noticed less by the popular press) ICANN has finally de-accredited EstDomains as their CEO has been convicted of money-laundering, credit card fraud and forgery. EstDomains are the registrar for most of the Russian/Eastern European criminal gangs, so without a registrar it makes no difference where they are hosted.

There are >250,000 domains under EstDomain's management and everyone who understands the significance of this will be watching to see if a bulk transfer takes place. If it does then hopefully the registrar who takes them will have their upstream service terminated PDQ.