WaPo reports that McColo.com, a major spam facilitator (among nastier shit) in San Jose, California has been taken down. McColo.com reportedly facilitated more than 75% of the spam sent each day worldwide, as well as hosting and collecting payments for child porn and acting as a botnet "mothership".
Another one bites the dust, and these particular asshats REALLY had it coming. With 40 child porn sites knowingly hosted on their servers, McColo's management should be facing Federal prison. But it took online security forms to take action against them, because Federal law enforcement is too busy arresting people for photographing trains and reservoirs.
Paul Ferguson, a threat researcher with computer security firm Trend Micro, said despite the apparently unilateral actions by McColo's Internet providers, U.S. authorities were long overdue to take a closer look at McColo and its customers.
"There is damning evidence that this activity has been going on there for way too long, and plenty of people in the security community have gone out of their way to raise awareness about this network, but nobody seems to care," Ferguson said. "It's a statement on the inefficiencies of trying to pursue legal prosecution of these guys that it takes so long for anything to be done about it. Law enforcement is saying they're doing what they can, but that's not enough. And if law enforcement can't address stuff like this in a timely fashion, then the whole concept of law enforcement in the cyber world needs to be readdressed, because it's hardly making a dent at the moment."
