At the Federal Trade Commission’s request, a district court judge has permanently shut down a rogue Internet Service Provider that recruited, hosted, and actively participated in the distribution of spam, spyware, child pornography, and other malicious and illegal content. The ISP’s computer servers and other assets have been seized and will be sold by a court-appointed receiver, and the operation has been ordered to turn over $1.08 million in ill-gotten gains to the FTC.

In June 2009, the FTC charged that 3FN, which does business under a variety of names, actively recruited and colluded with criminals to distribute harmful electronic content including spyware, viruses, trojan horses, phishing schemes, botnet command-and-control servers, and pornography featuring children, violence, bestiality, and incest. The FTC alleged that the defendant advertised its services in the darkest corners of the Internet, including a chat room for spammers.

The FTC complaint alleged that 3FN actively shielded its criminal clientele by either ignoring take-down requests issued by the online security community, or shifting its criminal elements to other Internet protocol addresses it controlled to evade detection.

The FTC also alleged that 3FN deployed and operated botnets – large networks of computers that have been compromised and enslaved by the originator of the botnet, known as a “bot herder.” Botnets can be used for a variety of illicit purposes, including sending spam and launching denial-of- service attacks. According to the FTC, the defendant recruited bot herders and hosted the command-and-control servers – the computers that relay commands from the bot herders to the compromised computers known as “zombie drones.”

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An excerpt from an interesting announcement by the Federal Trade Commission – taking action against a notorioius Internet Service Provider. (* from the FTC Website – original post here).

We aren’t the only ones thinking of others at this time of year and by that I mean the malware writers. Every year at the holidays we see an upsurge of ‘postcard ware’ based malware. They look like a e-card from a loved one so you are enticed to open them up and while some do display a pretty picture or a play a nice tune in the background they are infecting your pc.

Some recent sample are posted on the Microsoft Malware blog so you can see the pictures without having to get infected.

http://blogs.technet.com/mmpc/archive/2008/12/02/merry-malware.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/mmpc/archive/2008/12/04/o-come-all-ye-malware.aspx

While many of the e-cards sent at this time of the year are legitimate and sent with the best of intentions it is up to you to double check with the supposed sender if they really did send you one and if you don’t recognize the from e-mail address then don’t open it no matter how tempting it looks.

- Shaun

http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=50885

It is interesting to note that there are so many compromised bank accounts that they sell at a discount ($1,000 for an account with $40K in it. $10 for an account with $2500 in it) This tells us that the tricks the Cyber Criminals are using (phishing, vishing, spim) are working so you have to be careful out there or it will be your bank account that they are selling online.

Thankfully at IT Business they have provided the following list to remind us of what to and not do online.

Tips to protect yourself

• Use an e-mail filter to block fraudulent messages that are often used in phishing attacks . Use many layers of security such as anti-virus software, firewalls, and anti-phishing toolbars for your browser . Limit the amount of sensitive personal information on your computer.
• Use strong passwords and change them on a regular basis.
• Do not store online account passwords with your Web browser’s automatic feature.

Shaun