spamhaus

February 8, 2017

‘Top 10 Spammer’ Indicted for Wire Fraud

This post was originally published on this siteMichael A. Persaud, a California man profiled in a Nov. 2014 KrebsOnSecurity story about a junk email purveyor tagged as one of the World’s Top 10 Worst Spammers, was indicted this week on federal wire fraud charges tied to an alleged spamming operation. According to an indictment returned in federal court in Chicago, Persaud used multiple Internet addresses and domains – a technique known as “snowshoe spamming” – to transmit spam emails over at least nine networks. The Justice Department says Persaud sent well over a million spam emails to recipients in the United […]
April 9, 2017

Alleged Spam King Pyotr Levashov Arrested

This post was originally published on this siteAuthorities in Spain have arrested a Russian computer programmer thought to be one of the world’s most notorious spam kingpins. Spanish police arrested Pyotr Levashov under an international warrant executed in the city of Barcelona, according to Reuters. Russian state-run television station RT (formerly Russia Today) reported that Levashov was arrested while vacationing in Spain with his family. Spamdot.biz moderator Severa listing prices to rent his Waledac spam botnet. According to numerous stories here at KrebsOnSecurity, Levashov was better known as “Severa,” the hacker moniker used by a pivotal figure in many Russian-language cybercrime forums. Severa was […]
June 15, 2017

Inside a Porn-Pimping Spam Botnet

This post was originally published on this siteFor several months I’ve been poking at a decent-sized spam botnet that appears to be used mainly for promoting adult dating sites. Having hit a wall in my research, I decided it might be good to publish what I’ve unearthed so far to see if this dovetails with any other research out there. In late October 2016, an anonymous source shared with KrebsOnSecurity.com a list of nearly 100 URLs that — when loaded into a Firefox browser — each displayed what appeared to be a crude but otherwise effective text-based panel designed to report […]
March 29, 2018

Omitting the “o” in .com Could Be Costly

This post was originally published on this siteTake care when typing a domain name into a browser address bar, because it’s far too easy to fat-finger a key and wind up somewhere you don’t want to go. For example, if you try to visit some of the most popular destinations on the Web but omit the “o” in .com (and type .cm instead), there’s a good chance your browser will be bombarded with malware alerts and other misleading messages — potentially even causing your computer to lock up completely. As it happens, many of these domains appear tied to a […]