Spamhaus
Leaving a wake of over 12-years of criminal spamming and trillions of sent junk emails behind him, long time ROKSO listed spammer Alan Ralsky is finally behind the walls of a US Federal Prison. After pleading guilty to multiple federal criminal charges, and after time extensions to “get his affairs in order”, Ralsky reported to FCI Morgantown in north-central West Virginia on March 1st to start serving his 4-year, 3-month sentence.
Spamhaus, on behalf of the world’s internet email users, gives thanks to all involved. Big thank-you’s to FBI Special Agent Tom Winterhalter, U.S. Attorney Terry Berg, AUSA Julie Beck, USPIS Postal Inspector Karl Hansen and IRS Special Agent Marta Jacks. Over the course of a three-year investigation and prosecution, the investigation & prosecution teams were able to identify and convict 9 domestic and international members of this spam & fraud conspiracy, including Ralsky and his associates.
http://www.spamhaus.org/news.lasso?article=658
by certifiedbug on February 25, 2010
in Microsoft
Microsoft, a founding member of the Botnet Task Force, announced that a federal judge has granted a temporary restraining order cutting off 277 Internet domains believed to be run by criminals controlling a vast network of infected PCs.
This action has quickly and effectively cut off traffic to Waledac at the “.com” or domain registry level, severing the connection between the command and control centers of the botnet and most of its thousands of zombie computers around the world. Microsoft has since been taking additional technical countermeasures to downgrade much of the remaining peer-to-peer command and control communication within the botnet, and we will continue to work with the security community to mitigate and respond to this botnet.
http://blogs.technet.com/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/02/25/cracking-down-on-botnets.aspx
Computers infected by Waledac still need to be cleaned up. Users running Windows should run Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool which removes the malware.
