Fergie's Tech Blog

Rogue ISP Ordered to Liquidate, Pay FTC $1.08 Million

Casey Johnston writes on ARS Technica:

A rogue Internet service provider that hosted and participated in the distribution of spam, malware, and porn has finally been shut down as a result of a request made by the FTC to a district court judge. The ISP, 3FN, has had its servers and assets seized and has been ordered to turn over $1.08 million of its proceeds to the FTC.

The FTC first charged 3FN in June 2009 with a number of… really bad things. These included active recruiting of and working with criminals to distribute content such as spyware, trojan horses, phishing schemes, and pornography—including child porn. The FTC says 3FN advertised its services to like-minded people in the "darkest corners" of the Internet, like chat rooms for spammers.

3FN was accused of deploying and operating botnets and bot herders to send spam and execute denial-of-service attacks. It hosted the command-and-control servers that were responsible for the communication of information between the bot herders it recruited and the zombie computers used to mount attacks.

Though the FTC set its sights on taking 3FN down nearly a year ago, they've struggled to fully bring the ISP to its knees. 3FN operated under a number of names, including Triple Fiber Network, APS Telecom, APX Telecom, APS Communication, APS Communications, and Pricewert LLC, making it difficult to corral.

posted by Fergie @ 5/19/2010 07:11:00 PM