(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Following the US Federal Trade Commission’s (www.ftc.gov) takedown of accused spam host 3FN, the total spam level has fallen by no noticeable amount, according to managed email and web security services provider MX Logic (www.mxlogic.com).
When rogue hosting provider McColo was shut down in November 2008, MX Logic’s Threat Operations Center saw an immediate spam volume drop of about 60 percent, however, there was no volume drop off as a result of 3FN’s shut down.
“The reason is that botnets, particularly those that were affected by the McColo shutdown but who serve as a lesson to all botnet owners, have gone to great lengths to ensure that they have built redundancy into their networks to prevent the disruption caused by McColo from ever happening again,” according to an MX Logic statement.
MX Logic suspects that, while some of the larger spam botnets like Cutwail had command and control servers hosted at 3FN, because they now work in a multi-homed model, command and control centers are interspersed across many different providers on many different networks. The shutdown of 3FN requires no more than a minor update to be distributed from the other command and control servers to point the members of that botnet away from 3FN, allowing business to continue as usual.
MX Logic concludes, “[W]ith the decentralization of domain registration that has allowed domain registrars to setup shop who are more than happy to allow these rogue domains to come online and stay online, cyber criminals will continue to flock to these services until high authorities step in to get them shut down; a concept much easier said than done.”
While spam volume has not changed, a number of legitimate websites caught in 3FN’s web have also fallen offline. For instance, 3FN’s law–abiding appearance left Free Software Magazine (www.freesoftwaremagazine.com) and many others scrambling to get back online by quickly migrating to another web host.
