Common Ground Common Sense > Feds Shutter ‘Black Hat’ ISP

Full Version: Feds Shutter ‘Black Hat’ ISP

Common Ground Common Sense > Issues that Affect Our Lives > Civil Rights and Civil Liberties > First Amendment and Free Speech Issues

believe_it

Jun 5 2009, 06:11 AM

QUOTE

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/f...r-black-hat-isp

Feds Shutter 'Black Hat' ISP

By David Kravets
June 4, 2009 5:02 pm

For the first time, the Federal Trade Commission is shuttering an internet service provider it alleges, "recruits, knowingly hosts, and actively participates in the distribution of illegal, malicious and harmful electronic content" such as botnets and child porn.

The company, doing business as 3fn.net and APS Telecom, "actively recruited" to its hosting service thousands of "rouge" and "black hat" web sites distributing "illegal, malicious, and harmful electronic content including child pornography, spyware, viruses, trojan horses, phishing, botnet command and control servers, and pornography featuring violence, bestiality, and incest. "

A San Jose, California federal judge, responding to the FTC's lawsuit, has ordered (.pdf) upstream internet providers and data centers to stop servicing the company, also known as Pricewert, which is based in Oregon. Itss operators live in Belize.

The company had thousands of servers in the San Jose area.

Many of the thousands of sites it hosted were based in Russia, where admins on Thursday were scrambling to resume service. The complaint alleges Pricewert officials helped its member sites create and configure botnets.

According to the FTC's lawsuit, (.pdf) the company "hosts very little legitimate content and vast quantities of illegal, malicious, and harmful content, including child pornography, botnet command and control servers, spyware, viruses, trojans, phishing-related sites, illegal online pharmacies, investment and other web-based scams, and pornography featuring violence, bestiality, and incest."

The lawsuit alleges that Pricewert "actively shields its criminal clientele by either ignoring take-down requests issued by the online security community or shifting its criminal clients to other internet protocol addresses controlled by Pricewert so that they may evade detection."

Commission chairman Jonathon Leibowitz told the Washington Post that "Anything bad on the internet, they were involved in it."

.

from http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...ess=102x3908733

believe_it

Jun 5 2009, 06:33 AM

Comments Section: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/f...t-isp/#comments

believe_it

Jun 5 2009, 09:05 AM

QUOTE

http://current.com/items/90157535_ftc-shut...ce-provider.htm

FTC shuts down a rogue Internet service provider

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31112842/

The federal government has severed the Internet connection of a company accused of helping criminals serve up a "witches' brew" of nasty content online, from computer viruses to child pornography.

It's likely to be just a short-lived victory in the fight against cybercrime, though, since bad guys are very good at getting back online quickly.

The Federal Trade Commission said Thursday that it has ordered the shutdown of a company called Pricewert LLC, described in a complaint filed in San Jose, Calif., federal court as an Oregon-based shell company run by "overseas criminals," operating out of Belize and running many of its illegal operations out of servers in Silicon Valley.

Pricewert, which operated the "Triple Fiber Network" or "3FN," wasn't the type of Internet service that average consumers would see or sign up for. Instead, the service was advertised "in the darkest corners of the Internet" and was targeted at criminals who want to put malicious Web sites online, but need the servers and bandwidth to do it, according to the complaint.

Technicians working for 3FN even helped criminals maintain the armies of personal computers that they had infected with viruses, according to the complaint. Those armies are known as "botnets," and they require some sophistication to manage.

The FTC says the case marks the first time the agency has ordered the shuttering of an Internet provider. The agency has usually focused on taking out harmful Web sites individually. Companies that host malicious Web sites are usually forced offline under pressure from the FBI or computer security researchers, but without a formal government order — which is what makes Thursday's announcement significant.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said the agency decided to move on 3FN after getting information about the company's behavior that made it "so clear this was a rogue (Internet service provider)" that the agency had a strong case against it.

"This is very, very important because rather than go after the individual spammers, in one action we can shut down a host of bad actors," Leibowitz said in an interview. "There's always a whack-a-mole problem in cases like this, but at the very least we've put a meaningful wrench in their gears."

The FTC's complaint draws a link between 3FN and a notorious Internet provider called McColo Corp., which was also operating out of a data center in Silicon Valley.

McColo was believed responsible for half of the world's spam before it was shut down in November. Spam dropped precipitously after McColo's Internet providers pulled the plug on McColo, but it has since rebounded.

When investigators from NASA looked into intrusions into some of its computers, they traced them back to McColo's servers. A search warrant later revealed those servers were also routing instant message conversations between 3FN employees and customers that formed the basis of some of the FTC's allegations.

A man who picked up the phone at one of 3FN's offices Thursday night said the company wasn't commenting and hung up...

.

This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.