Another spammer in the bitbucket

[unixronin]

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."

Comments

[fruitylips.livejournal.com]

Our Security Analysis group is scoffing at the idea that they're in any way responsible for 50-75% (depending on which article you read) amount of the spam in the world. Also, we're not seeing any actual drop in spam volume, but a shift in spam topics (more casino, less viagra/pr0n).

[fruitylips.livejournal.com]

Almost forgot, but Support says, however, that the number of people calling to complain about spam getting through is about 1/4 of what we usually see.

[luke-jaywalker.livejournal.com]

Is it reasonable to hope that a host-of-child-porn is going to get the same treatment in prison as a child-rapist?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I was thinking that myself.

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

G. Gordon Liddy said it don't happen. They're mops and soak up all the abuse and degradation meted out and are more useful as a bitch than dead.

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

If law enforcement doesn't address it they get more power even if they 'kick the bums out'.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Good riddance to some really bad trash, there.

The sad part is that I can say with some reasonable certainty that the spammers and other creeps will set up shop elsewhere in short order.