Projo Subterranean Homepage News

Major Source of Online Scams and Spams Knocked Offline Last night, Brian Krebs of the Washington Post's Security Fix blog reported this story, in which he figures mightily:

A U.S. based Web hosting firm that security experts say was responsible for facilitating more than 75 percent of the junk e-mail blasted out each day globally has been knocked offline following reports from Security Fix on evidence gathered about suspicious activity emanating from the network.

For the past four months, Security Fix has been gathering data from the security industry about McColo Corp., a San Jose, Calif., based Web hosting service whose client list experts say includes some of the most disreputable cyber-criminal gangs in business today.

On Monday, Security Fix contacted the Internet providers that manage more than 90 percent of the company's connection to the larger Internet, sending them information about badness at McColo as documented by the security industry.

He ends with,

There's more to come with details about this story later tonight or early tomorrow, but I wanted to get this post published before we got scooped on our own story.

Today, he follows up with Spam Volumes Drop by Two-Thirds After Firm Goes Offline.

Well done, Brian Krebs.

Later... Thursday, Nov. 13: The details.

In trying to get a sense of the activity attributed to McColo, I put together a flow chart, or mind map, showing McColo's relationship to various sites associated with botnet activity, spam, pharmacy domains, etc. I created the flow chart with the excellent and gratis FreeMind software. I've included a screen shot for those who don't have or want this software installed (click on the image to enlarge it).

The link is A Closer Look at McColo, with intelligent comments.