Fergie's Tech Blog

Security Fix: 'Network Identity Theft' Politely Avenged

Brian Krebs writes on Security Fix:

A massive swath of some 65,536 unique Internet addresses that appear to have been swiped from early Internet pioneers by a convicted spammer has been reclaimed by Internet regulators, Security Fix has learned.

In April, Security Fix reported that a huge block of Internet addresses once assigned to San Francisco Bay Packet Radio -- an organization that was involved way back in the 1970s in testing the predecessor to the global commercial Internet that we all use today -- was being used to send e-mail for a company called MediaBreakaway. That company's chief executive is Scott Richter -- a self-avowed "spam king" who has been sued by a number of the Internet's biggest players -- including Microsoft and Myspace -- for sending spam.

When I was first presented with this information, I put the relevant questions to the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) -- one of five regional Internet registries worldwide that is responsible for allocating IP addresses. At the time, the ARIN people were very interested in the information I was reporting, but very reluctant to comment about it.

posted by Fergie @ 11/18/2008 01:16:00 PM