33 percent of all spam ended yesterday

Sort of….

The FTC (Federal trade Commission) won a preliminary legal victory against the world’s largest spam gang  by persuading a Chicago Federal court to freeze the gangs assets and to order their spam network shutdown.

The spam gang, known by spamfighting agencies as HerbalKIng, had a networks of 35,000 computers which which could send out 10 billion spam messages a day.  Many of these computers were owned by people who didn’t know their computers had been remotely commandeered to send email on behalf of the spammers.  The network had ties in the United States, China, India, New Zealand, and Australia. The network was referred to as the “Mega-D Botnet”.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term “botnet, here’s an explanationation from SearchSecurity.com:

A botnet (also known as a zombie army) is a number of Internet computers that, although their owners are unaware of it, have been set up to forward transmissions (including spam or viruses) to other computers on the Internet. Any such computer is referred to as a zombie - in effect, a computer “robot” or “bot” that serves the wishes of some master spam or virus originator. Most computers compromised in this way are home-based. According to a report from Russian-based Kaspersky Labs, botnets — not spam, viruses, or worms — currently pose the biggest threat to the Internet. A report from Symantec came to a similar conclusion.

The network was purportedly responsible for a third of all spam at one point, and had been collecting $400,000 in Visa charges in one month.

The spammers had been sending messages hawking various pharmaceuticals and male-enhancement drugs. The charges brought against them are more than just spamming counts, but the charges also include making false claims about their product, selling pharmaceuticals without a prescriptions or doctor’s intructions, and selling drugs from countries such as Indie which aren’t regulated or approved for sale in the US.  Many of the drugs being sold had harmful side effects.

The FTC’s investigation aginst this organization had been ongoing for over 2 years.

Here’s a bio about HerbalKing from Spamhous spamfighting organization:

HerbalKing is a massive affiliate style spam program for snakeoil Body Part Enhancement scams (penis enlargement). It has also done spam campaigns for replica luxury goods, pharma (counterfeit pills) and porn. Spam arrives via botnets with spamvertised sites on “bulletproof” hosting offshore, particularly in China. The group also uses fast-flux hosting, running sites on hacked botnet PCs.

HerbalKing, with connections to India (possibly due to pharmaceutical supplies), rivals the traditional Eastern European spam gangs for volume and criminal botnet methods of its spam. “Tulip Labs” appears to be the source of HerbalKing’s herbal remedy products. The main operation may be run out of New Zealand or Australia by long-time spamming brothers Lance & Shane Atkinson. (see: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/juha/2237 )

There are hundreds of SBL listings related to HerbalKing but some may not be linked to this ROKSO due to the tremendous number of identities and domains used by the program. Lists of domains should be considered examples of that abuse of domain name space, not comprehensive lists of their registrations.

Read more at the FTC’s web site; the NY Times; and the ars technica web site.

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UK Hacker Loses Extradition Hearing

42 year old British hacker Gary McKinnon, lost his extradition hearing in a top London court today. As a result he may have to return to the US to face charges of hacing into dozens of US military, NASA, and other government web sites in an effort to prove that the US government was covering up the existence of aliens.

The House of Lords voted not to block his extradition.  Now his defense team will approach the European Court of Human Rights in France i  another effort to block his extradition to the US.

Read more about it at CNN.com

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