Fergie's Tech Blog

'Bulletproof' ISP for Crimeware Gangs Knocked Offline

Dan Goodin writes on The Register:

One of the internet's most resilient and crimeware-friendly networks was knocked offline Friday after the plug was pulled on its upstream service provider, security watchers said.

Russia-based PROXIEZ-NET lost its connection to the internet at about 3 am California time, according to Zeus Tracker, a website that monitors the status of internet service providers used to control PCs infected by the notorious Zeus crimeware package. Before it was disconnected, the "bulletproof" provider hosted 13 known Zeus command and control channels, making it the most Zeus-friendly ISP, Zeus Tracker statistics show.

Zeus Tracker leaders don't yet know the reason for the outage, but one of them pointed out to The Register that PROXIEZ-NET's upstream provider, DIGERNET, has also had its internet connection severed. Classless Inter-Domain Routing records show it being unceremoniously withdrawn from internet routing tables, leaving its downstream node unable to communicate.

PROXIEZ-NET has been widely accused as being a haven for purveyors of crimeware. On Tuesday, the network was added to the real-time block list maintained by Spamhaus. On Thursday night, DIGERNET was removed from the same list.

posted by Fergie @ 5/14/2010 02:11:00 PM