Monday, June 08, 2009
The Federal Trade Commission last week sent a message to those who support illegal activities on the Internet that there’s a new sheriff in town. In a move deemed unprecedented by some Internet analysts, the FTC got a judge to order the shutdown of a San Jose, CA, Internet Service Provider known as Triple Fiber Network (3FN.net) because of its activities helping distribute everything from illegal spam to child pornography.
3FN, whose parent company Pricewert LLC is based in Belize, “actively recruits and colludes with criminals seeking to distribute illegal, malicious, and harmful electronic content including child pornography, spyware, viruses, trojan horses, phishing, botnet command and control servers, and pornography featuring violence, bestiality, and incest,” according to the FTC. Brian Krebs, who covers computer security for the Washington Post, reported that 3FN hosted many of the operations behind “Cutwail,” one of the world’s largest spam botnets.
FTC Chairman Jonathan Leibowitz said his agency’s crackdown on 3FN was assisted by cyber investigators at NASA, Spamhaus, the Shadowserver Foundation, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and Symantec Corp.
“It is groundbreaking that the FTC would present and package such a good case for the takedown,” André DiMino, co-founder and director of the Shadowserver Foundation, told SecurityFocus. “They did their homework.”
Krebs reported the shutdown of 3FN did not put its nefarious clients out of business. Some had switched to other ISPs within hours after the court order to continue their illegal operations. But Leibowitz insisted the action against 3FN demonstrated that the FTC intends to go after those creating trouble on the Internet. “This is a signal that we’re going to go after you, and you’re not going to be able to hide behind the shroud of the Internet and be immune from enforcement action,” Leibowitz told the Washington Post.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
FTC Shuts Down Notorious Rogue Internet Service Provider, 3FN Service Specializes in Hosting Spam-Spewing Botnets, Phishing Web sites, Child Pornography, and Other Illegal, Malicious Web Content (Federal Trade Commission press release)
FTC Persuades Court to Shutter Rogue ISP (by Robert Lemus, Security Focus)
FTC Sues, Shuts Down N. Calif. Web Hosting Firm (by Brian Krebs, Washington Post)
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