{"id":973,"date":"2008-11-12T19:53:10","date_gmt":"2008-11-13T00:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/?p=973"},"modified":"2009-04-18T23:00:19","modified_gmt":"2009-04-19T03:00:19","slug":"oh-happy-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/12\/oh-happy-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh Happy Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago I published a short post<\/a> on the demise of Atrivo (aka Intercage). Today Washington Post technology columnist Brian Krebs brings word that McColo Corp., a Northern California hosting firm that had been identified by the computer security community\u00a0as home base for machines responsible for coordinating the sending of roughly 75 percent of all spam each day, has been taken offline<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Host of Internet Spam Groups is Cut Off<\/h3>\n

Spam Drops After Internet Providers Disconnect a California Hosting Firm<\/p>\n

By Brian Krebs
\nwashingtonpost.com Staff Writer
\nWednesday, November 12, 2008; 7:16 PM<\/p>\n

The volume of junk e-mail sent worldwide dropped drastically today after a Web hosting firm identified by the computer security community as a major host of organizations allegedy engaged in spam activity was taken offline, according to security firms that monitor spam distribution online.<\/p>\n

While its gleaming, state-of-the-art, 30-story office tower in downtown San Jose, Calif., hardly looks like the staging ground for what could be called a full-scale cyber crime offensive, security experts have found that a relatively small firm at that location is home to servers that serve as a gateway for a significant portion of the world’s junk e-mail.<\/p>\n

The servers are operated by McColo Corp., which these experts say has emerged as a major U.S. hosting service for international firms and syndicates that are involved in everything from the remote management of millions of compromised computers to the sale of counterfeit pharmaceuticals and designer goods, fake security products and child pornography via email.<\/p>\n

But the company’s web site was not accessible today, when two Internet providers cut off MoColo’s connectivity to the Internet, security experts said. Immediately after McColo was unplugged, security companies charted a precipitous drop in spam volumes worldwide. E-mail security firm IronPort said spam levels fell by roughly 66 percent as of Tuesday evening.<\/p>\n

Spamcop.net, another spam watch dog, found a similar decline, from about 40 spam e-mails per second to around 10 per second. Read the rest…<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Score one for the good guys… Of course I’m sure we’ll all miss those ads for male enhancement products in our inbox… \ud83d\ude44<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago I published a short post on the demise of Atrivo (aka Intercage). Today Washington Post technology columnist Brian Krebs brings word that McColo Corp., a Northern California hosting firm that had been identified by the computer security community\u00a0as home base for machines responsible for coordinating the sending of roughly 75 percent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,28,15,14],"tags":[1364,298,1360,201],"class_list":["post-973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-culture","category-internet","category-security","category-technology","tag-internet","tag-mccolo-corp","tag-security","tag-spam","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfpI7-fH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1688,"url":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/17\/one-year-old-today\/","url_meta":{"origin":973,"position":0},"title":"One Year Old Today","author":"Jeff","date":"March 17, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Jasetaro.com is one year old today. I launched this site on March 17, 2008 mainly because I'd out grown the laughable 5MBs of free web space provided by my ISP. I toyed around with free services like GoeCities, MySpace, Facebook and Blogger for a while and I wasn't crazy about\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Announcements"","block_context":{"text":"Announcements","link":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/category\/announcements\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":653,"url":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/05\/atrivointercage-down-for-the-count\/","url_meta":{"origin":973,"position":1},"title":"Atrivo\/Intercage Down For The Count?","author":"Jeff","date":"October 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Being in the technology business this is something near and dear to my heart... It appears that Atrivo, also know as Intercage is finally down for the count. Gadi Evron has a post here. Brian Krebs has backgound here.","rel":"","context":"In "Crime"","block_context":{"text":"Crime","link":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/category\/crime\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":658,"url":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/06\/sarah-palin-barack-obama-tops-in-spam\/","url_meta":{"origin":973,"position":2},"title":"Sarah Palin & Barack Obama: Tops In Spam","author":"Jeff","date":"October 6, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Secure Computing released a new report on spam trends Friday, among the reports findings, spam citing Gov. Sarah Palin topped her opponent, Sen. Joe Biden, by a ratio of 5 to 4 during the month of September. In a top-of-the-ticket comparison, spam using the name of Sen. Barack Obama easily\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Internet","link":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/category\/internet\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1079,"url":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/09\/ap-bad-economy-helping-internet-scammers-recruit-mules\/","url_meta":{"origin":973,"position":3},"title":"AP: Bad Economy Helping Internet Scammers Recruit ‘Mules’","author":"Jeff","date":"December 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"From the Associated Press via Examiner.com: Bad economy helping Web scammers recruit 'mules' By Jordan Robertson, The Associated Press, December 9, 2008 SAN JOSE, Calif. - The worsening economy appears to be helping computer crooks with one of their toughest tasks: tricking people into opening their homes and bank accounts\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Crime"","block_context":{"text":"Crime","link":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/category\/crime\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1611,"url":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/05\/spam-bots-and-a-new-community\/","url_meta":{"origin":973,"position":4},"title":"Spam Bots and a New Community","author":"Jeff","date":"March 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd been working on a few things behind the scenes... Over the last couple of weeks this site has been inundated by spam bots. In fact the number of spam comments has more than doubled over the last month. For the most part\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Announcements"","block_context":{"text":"Announcements","link":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/category\/announcements\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1055,"url":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/24\/julie-ameros-four-year-nightmare-is-finally-over\/","url_meta":{"origin":973,"position":5},"title":"Julie Amero’s Four Year Nightmare is Finally Over","author":"Jeff","date":"November 24, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Alex Eckelberry has the details. After 4 years and 2 months, Julie Amero is now free. You\u2019ll recall that Julie Amero was convicted of 4 felony counts, each count carrying a maximum of 10 years, for exposing school children to pornography. The reality is that Julie, a 40\u2013year old, pregnant\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Computers"","block_context":{"text":"Computers","link":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/category\/computers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}