International Spam Ring Shut Down 243
smooth wombat writes "An international spam ring with ties to Australia, New Zealand, China, India, and the US is in the process of being shut down. Finances of members in the US are being frozen using the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 while the FBI is pursuing criminal charges. The group sent spam advertising male enhancement herbs and other items using a botnet estimated at 35,000 computers, and able to send 10 billion emails per day. The Federal Trade Commission monitored the group's finances and found that they had cleared $400,000 in Visa charges in one month alone."
Of Spammy Ring... (Score:4, Funny)
In the shower we sing,
While suds we fling,
Cleanshaven chin bring...
Burma Shave
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How can you make a Burma Shave joke on Slashdot, where most of the users were born at least a decade after the last sign came down?
Re:Of Spammy Ring... (Score:4, Informative)
But the real point is to escape briefly the election season.
Re:Of Spammy Ring... (Score:5, Funny)
Despising both men
If McCain wins, what then?
Vietnam Shave
Myanmar-Shave (Score:5, Funny)
How can you make a Burma Shave joke on Slashdot, where most of the users were born at least a decade after the last sign came down?
Besides, the name of the country has changed since then:
Re:Myanmar-Shave (Score:4, Informative)
Only if you are a military junta. Most of the rest of the world still calls it Burma.
New York Times Manual of Style says... (Score:4, Informative)
Myanmar is the preferred usage, Burmese is acceptable, and to remind readers it was once called Burma when appropriate.
I will refrain from the obvious Times-bashing jokes.
See also: http://www.slate.com/id/2191002/ [slate.com]
Three Rings (Score:5, Funny)
Three Rings spamming the Elven-kings for Cialis to buy,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords to refinance their home of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men lacking in size,
One for the Dark Lord reading his pr0n
In the Land of Mordor where the Spammers lie.
One Ring to spam them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to fleece them all and in their greed bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Spammers lie.
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Bravo, I haven't thought about that poem in a long time.
Jeez you people... (Score:5, Insightful)
just stop buying stuff advertised by spam already.
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Re:Jeez you people... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Jeez you people... (Score:5, Interesting)
And those people are not going to be reading Slashdot. That's why I'm surprised that the government and ISPs have not cooperated to mount a branded effort to discredit spam (risk of stolen credit card, product not showing up, etc) and educate the masses.
If spam is a burden for ISPs (extra bandwidth, plus complaining users) surely they'd jump on board a campaign if a government or organised group could provide good educational materials.
We watch awkward anti-piracy spiels in cinemas before movies, why couldn't ISPs incorpoate anti-spam messages into their sites, marketing material, bills, etc?
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We watch awkward anti-piracy spiels in cinemas before movies, why couldn't ISPs incorpoate anti-spam messages into their sites, marketing material, bills, etc?
Because in the end, the bandwidth will be paid for. If not by the consumer, then by the spammer, if not by the spammer then by the 30K people infected with spammers trojan-of-choice.
Something that inflates usage and reduces overall quality is something that increases sales and pushes upselling to "faster" plans. Being able to use it as an excuse for why ISP's are somehow allowed to sell more potential service contracts then they can support is simply a side bonus.
What? Me? Cynical?
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The botnet represent criminal activity that goes far beyond sending spam and
Re:Jeez you people... (Score:5, Insightful)
And if pig's could fly...
The OP's point was pointless. An astoundingly small percentage of the population responds to Spam. There is no way imaginable to magically stop every single ignorant, insecure, chump with a credit card from using it for herbal penis pills.
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Re:Jeez you people... (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing that confuses me is there are less than 10B people in the world. So.....
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Re:Jeez you people... (Score:5, Insightful)
And if pig's could fly...
The OP's point was pointless. An astoundingly small percentage of the population responds to Spam. There is no way imaginable to magically stop every single ignorant, insecure, chump with a credit card from using it for herbal penis pills.
We could lace the herbal penis pills with cyanide. Then they'd only buy once.
Re:Jeez you people... (Score:5, Funny)
You could use spam "Super Brain Cleaners - they make you SMARTER!"
They come in .22, .357. and ultra deluxe .50 sizes.
Re:Jeez you people... (Score:5, Interesting)
*
If age >= 18 then can get a credit card;
else only with parental consent.
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The problem is why would the credit card companies want to do that? The only people the credit card companies don't want to give credit to are people who can't pay their bills, gullible or not.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Maybe to apply for a credit card, instead of beiing age>=18*, there should be a gullible test.
Did you know that the word "gullible" was omitted from the most recent version of the Oxford English Dictionary? Fact.
Re:Jeez you people... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Carpal Tunnel is easy. Drink loads of vinegar, start making love with the other hand and let's face it typing with one hand should be second nature by now.
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I have found such a cure. Please send $10 to...
Re:Jeez you people... (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the current banking crisis. Bankers, realtors, appraisers, all conspiring to convince some gullible idiot that he or she can afford to not only buy a house 3X their yearly income, but said house would become a magic money machine. The ARM mortgage would be no problem because the laws of conservation no longer existed, and the double digit growth in value would continue forever, and the house could be sold at a profit at any point.
Then there were the gullible idiots who bought the magical risk free packaged investments based on the magical mortgages. These magical financial instruments were another guaranteed trove of never ending money generation.
Of course, like spammers, the only people who made money were the criminals, and, like spammers, should be in jail.
The flaw in your logic is easy money is that only thing that makes people stupid faster than easy sex. Tell people that a magic fairy will give them money, and most will believe it. That is why our presidential candidates primary sources of income, alcohol and gambling, are so lucrative.
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Um.. there's nothing wrong with buying a house that's 3x your yearly income.
The main problem is using the house itself as collatoral for the loan. It makes houses appear to be worth more, which then allows bigger loans to be secured, and so on...until the whole thing comes tumbling back down.
But you should be able to pay off a mortgage of 3x your current yearly income in twenty or thirty years, with nothing more than work, sweat, tears, and work.
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People will always be stupid/desperate/gullible. The same "demand side" argument could be made for drugs/copyright violation (wow, what a can of worms). If you want to fight it, you have to do it as a whole: cut off both the supply and demand sides, and saying "if only they would just stop" is missing half the point.
The only difference between the aforementioned 3 issues is zeal of enforcement, and you should direct your resources to those who would ratchet up enforcement or encourage leniency in regards
Re:Jeez you people... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've said it before, I'll say it again:
Less customers means less money flowing to scummy companies. Less money flowing to them means less money being given to spammers. No money in spamming means people stop spamming.
And for the inevitable and snarky "here's why your idea won't work list" post to follow: I know that it isn't legal. That's why your hire a plausible deniability, like a merc company, to do it for you. Geez.
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I've said it before, I'll say it again: Bust a couple spam rings Sieze the customer list Send each customer a free sample of cyanide-- labeled "Viagra" The market dries up Less customers means less money flowing to scummy companies. Less money flowing to them means less money being given to spammers. No money in spamming means people stop spamming. And for the inevitable and snarky "here's why your idea won't work list" post to follow: I know that it isn't legal. That's why your hire a plausible deniability, like a merc company, to do it for you. Geez.
Facist! That reeks like something that would happen in Nazi Germany.
Send them LSD instead!
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At those rates, for a comfortable living, I could either work 2 weeks out of the year, or work year round and go into full retirement after about 3 years.
The thing that I would really like to know is where all the idiots that buy from spam are. I could easily sell off a few of my surplus bridges and retire.
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Anyone you know that doesn't read Slashdot would be a good place to start looking.
Re:Jeez you people... (Score:4, Interesting)
Hear hear!
I look at the spam and I get and I think why would anyone respond to this crap? Porno aside, why would anyone think it's a good idea to buy medicine, products or anything else from some shady stranger?
The other surprising with this story, is that efficiency aside, it seems that the makers actually included an attempt at a shoddy (and probably dangerous) pill. I would have just guessed they used sawdust. LOL
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Ch33p m3ds! \/1@gr@!? I'm sold!!
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just stop buying stuff advertised by spam already.
"Jeez" yourself - the days when spam was about selling stuff ended about 5 years ago. Sure, it may look like they're selling meds or something, but it's much more likely to be just one step in a bigger plan they're running.
Really - if it was as simply as following the money then do you think we wouln't have nailed spam by now?
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Collection of credit card information and personal details in order to commit identity fraud and other such horrendously undesirable stuff.
Obviously.
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The point of spam is still as simple as it ever was: make money off of stupid people.
What's not always obvious is who is making the money, and who are the stupid people. It's not necessarily Charley and his Giant Penis pills, but rather the guy sending the emails. If he gets $1.00 to spend a million emails, at 10 billion spams per day he's making $10,000 a day. He doesn't care if Charley sells one pill or a million -- he got his money up front.
The email sender might even be fleecing the spam author
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Much of it is about infecting systems with malware to steal information available through it (passwords, account numbers, credit cards, etc.), and then spreading those infections further to gather more information. That identity information is then sold around (profit for the obtainers and sellers), and used to illegally purchase items (profit for the buyers).
However, as noted in a post below, there are a number of scammers out there happy to use spam to get their quick buck and then disappear. Unfortunat
Re:Jeez you people... (Score:4, Interesting)
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When have police even tried to "follow the money"? The amounts in each case are far below the threshold for them to take in interest. Only in a very few cases, so rare that they make headlines, do they make even a token effort to investigate. And maybe one or two spammers a year get charged. The FBI apparently thinks it's more important to have agents pretending to be teenage girls to entrap lonely
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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They don't know if it will work or not until after they do it. I'm sure there's enough suckers out there that the spammers don't heavily rely on repeat business.
Re:Jeez you people... (Score:5, Informative)
why would a company pay spammers to send out emails if it doesn't make them money?
You're forgetting Rule #1: spammers lie.
The company believes that the spammer has been very successful in the past with their double-opt-in targeted marketing campaigns and the spammer's other clients have been very satisfied, because that's what the spammer tells them. They don't find out the truth until after the spammer has been paid.
Re:Jeez you people... (Score:5, Funny)
why would a company pay spammers to send out emails if it doesn't make them money?
I'm glad you asked. You see... I was once like you; confused and uninformed. I worked a 9-5 dead end job. But then I discovered the miracle of "unsolicited guerrilla electronic advertising" and made millions! Wouldn't YOU like to be like ME?!
For the first time ever, I'm willing to let you in on the secrets to my success with my spr0cket-Style Spam Success Strategy. To keep this offer exclusive, I have to charge you $2000 for the kit. But you'll make that back in the first HOUR of working at home, as you learn to apply the spr0cket-Style Spam Success Strategy!
I will even throw in a 3month supply of Herbal Pants Enchancers absolutely FREE. Could I afford to do this if my system wasn't successful?
Order today.
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Fixed that for you. And for the good of mankind as well.
We got mentioned! (Score:5, Funny)
An international spam ring with ties to Australia, New Zealand, China, India, and the US is in the process of being shut down.
China: > 1 billion people.
India: > 1 billion people.
USA: > 300 million people.
Australia: > 21 million people.
New Zealand: > 4 million people.
But the most important thing, we got mentioned!
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This won't solve anything (Score:5, Funny)
Your post advocates a
( ) technical (x) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(x) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(x) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
(x) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(x) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
(x) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
(x) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
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Incorrect. All of the mentioned countries have anti-spam laws. As such, jurisdictional issues do not exist as each country co-operates with the others to prosecute the entire damn lot. Did you not see the part where the governments were successful in destroying this spam ring?
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Did you not see the part where my inbox is still filled with spam? 20 months of work and they haven't made any noticeable impact on spam. This investigation, and the Can Spam Act, aren't doing anything but wasting tax money.
Hell,
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Why post AC? You deserve some credit (I think. I haven't seen it before anyway.)
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Exxxcellent (Score:3, Interesting)
Hopefully this will turn out to be excellent news if they can indeed keep these folks shut down and away from continuing their spamming.
My concerns though are the 35,000 computers being used to spam. How long before they're found again. Or maybe they already are being all used by others. Is there any way of getting these machines repaired or otherwise reported to their ISPs? I figure if they have stats on how many machines, they have info on the machines themselves. Heck if they're setup to "receive updates" for software or holes or whatnot, maybe a nice white hat hacking to "update" the software so it self destructs the wide open hole and patches exploitable holes so they're safe?
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Re:Exxxcellent (Score:4, Interesting)
There are lots of hacked computers and ISPs just don't have enough resources to contact every user, convince them that there really is something wrong with their PC (most users would see it as an annoying intrusion at best, and insulting at worst), and then walk them through fixing it. Maybe governments could step up here and provide funding for ISPs to perform this function, so it would become a profitable exercise and therefore something ISPs would want to actively engage in. That then raises the question of how much money taxpayers would be willing to put into such a scheme. A lot of people will argue that it's a waste of money because most computers are in other countries so it won't make any difference to spam etc.
How does this work, exactly. (Score:5, Funny)
Does anybody know how exactly this spam works?
Say I own a widget company...i want to sell my widgets!! I know of this thing called "internet" that a lot of people are using, and decide that I need to utilize it to sell my widgets.
Do I just google for "email marketing"? Do I contact an advertisement agency?
Is there ANY sort of legitimacy involved in spam trafficking?
Do these spammers operate like real live businesses? Can I demand statistics on penetration from them? Do they have offices with receptionists and accountants and shitty corporate art?
Re:How does this work, exactly. (Score:4, Funny)
Do I just google for "email marketing"? Do I contact an advertisement agency?
Try it. You can find some places pretty easy after googling "email marketing".
Is there ANY sort of legitimacy involved in spam trafficking?
Short answer: no. Long answer: yes, but only if you define "any" broadly and "legitimate" loosely.
Re:How does this work, exactly. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's typically the undirected, consumer mailing and scamming that have given email marketing a bad name; i.e. 3nl4rg3 t3h pen-fifteen. Though, from an outside standpoint, even those are less time-intrusive than television commercials, but oddly not from a social acceptance standpoint.
However, direct email marketing businesses are like the used-car dealerships of today. Most of them are very shady folk selling nothing but rusted nuts and bolts. There are good ones out there that the Fortune 1000 companies rely on as their latest thousand-man rolodex, but you have to do your homework to find them.
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From what I read, you can download E-mail spamming list management applications from just about anywhere. This can be set up to use lists of remote relays and lists of E-mail addresses. Both of these can be collected by yourself or bought online.
Alternatively, you can download an application from botnet owners that allows you to send E-mails for a given fee per thousand machines or E-mails.
Good thing there's a money back guarantee... (Score:5, Funny)
If you still have a small penis, simply get a notarized note from your doctor stating it is so, and you can get your money back!
My favorite recent scam (not TFA mentioned above), as reported in the press [cincinnati.com]:
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So, for Joe to get back a fee of $69.95 (times however many months the sucker paid for), he has to have :
Fines for those in NZ (Score:5, Informative)
$200,000 fines are being aimed at three of the offenders here in New Zealand:
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/8D970CCB86C6155ACC2574E200636699
Re:Fines for those in NZ (Score:5, Insightful)
A $200k fine for people involved in a business doing $400k/month in transactions. Yup, that'll teach 'em!
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Well, the fine makes that $400k/month figure look all the more dubious.
Smells like a sensationalist headline to me, maybe the NYT added a 0 or two?
I mean, if they really made $400k a month then why would a judge - who deems them guilty - set such a ridiculous fine?
Also please ponder for a second how much $400.000 dollars really is. Let's assume the average viagra victim pays $20 for his fix. Let's further assume they never actually send out any boxes, thus turnover equals profit. That still means they had n
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When I clicked on "buy this" from a penis enlargement spam the other day (just out of curiosity), the price was $200+. So thats only 2,000 customers.
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My faith in mankind is sinking rapidly...
Well, *if* those figures are real then I guess I should reconsider my career path.
$400k a month, heck, only $10k a month is a whole lot of dough for running a few shell-scripts...
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(just out of curiosity)
Uh huh. They only need 1999 more now.
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Well, I assume the $400K per month is for more the whole team, in which case $200K per person sounds quite reasonable.
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Exxon, with 400+ billion in revenue (and tens of billions of $$$ in profit) got a judgement struck down for a few billion because it was excessive. I think the numbers were that the actual damage was $2 billion, and the punitive damages were less than three times that, and it was still found to be excessive. It's too bad that we can't all operate that way. Speeding fine? Limited to 3 t
Where do they get the crap that they sell? (Score:2, Interesting)
In all seriousness, how do these people stay in business? Are they just charging and not delivering any product? If not, where are they getting the shit that they're selling?
And why can't some authority just make a purchase and then trace where the money's going to track them down? Is selling this pseudo-medical crap and prescription drugs even legal?
Jail time? (Score:4, Interesting)
Please, please, please, please, please, please!
Running a botnet's gotta be a jail time worthy offense, right?
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Jail, hell. Death penalty.
Or what they did to William Wallace:
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Sure it is. As is selling dangerous drugs, rape, robbery, and murder. And yet these crimes continue.
Tough laws, by themselves, are never a solution. I'm not saying that tough laws are useless, but we've fallen into this nasty habit of throwing a lot of people in jail and then pretending to ourselves that's we've solved the problem. That pretense has turned out to be pretty expensive — cell space for 7.2 million adults costs. And the problems that we're pretending to solve are pretty much as bad as eve
Go Palindromes (Score:2, Funny)
Hey, enlarge your something! (Score:2)
Message to all thingmakers:
100 years guarantee! Enlarge your something!
Quickly and easily our herb from the Asia jungles makes your thing something.
Don't be too upset if your thing is not something! We could make your thing something, dare I say thing-thing!
Our very herbal thingmaker approved by top thingmakers makes the mixture to make your thing to the thing-thing.
So open your thing to our thing.
Thank you.
Before we get too excited... (Score:3, Informative)
The magic elixer (Score:2)
Actually I'll believe they have found something when I suddenly see a third of the women walking around bowlegged and glassy eyed.
Their problem... (Score:2)
They figured that CAN-SPAM meant that you "can spam" people. And usually, it does.
The solution is windows vista (Score:2, Funny)
In a few years when everyone upgrades to security hardened Windows Vista it will mark the end of spam rings and botnets.
Finally! This will cut my spam (Score:2)
by about 2%
go team.
Bank Security Alerts (Score:2)
Does this mean I'll stop getting those bank account phishing attempts with the ugly yellowish background?
Or the stock tip ones with the nice, floating, pastel colored random text on a plain white background, with the actual message in plain black text?
How about a fscking RICO prosecution already? (Score:2)
I mean come on, let's label this what it is, an organized criminal conspiracy, and let's bring the really harsh laws to bear on these people. The best part is all the assholes in legitimate business colluding with them get to be members of the same conspiracy.
10 billion emails a day? (Score:2)
able to send 10 billion emails per day
That's almost enough to send a spam to every person on the planet twice. Even if some have more than one email address, there are a sufficient number who do not have an email address to balance that out. So I can only assume one (or both) of 2 things:
Either way, that's a tremendous amount of burden on the tubes. Quite possibly more spam from this one ring than al
Your Government at Work (Score:2)
And it only took 3 million complaints before the FTC got involved!
Sadly spammers are like the Hydra (Score:3, Informative)
Like all security problems meatware is the biggest fail point. People are just plain dumb a lot of the time, especially when they think they can get rich quick or get a bigger penis or set of breasts.
My spam stopped one week ago (Score:2)
I'm not exactly sure why, but a few months ago, I started receiving about 150 spam messages per day. A week ago, this deluge was reduced to its former trickle. When I first saw this article, I thought maybe it had to do with this spam ring being shut down, but the article was only written today. My best theory is that an individual botnet was recently disbanded. Does anybody who's up on internet security know why one person would (almost) just stop receiving spam?
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I'm still trying to figure out how they know that I have a small penis...
When you entered a contest for a free H3 Hummer, they passed along your email to these guys.
If you think that's weird, all I get are spam mails for earplugs, horse-fitted condoms, and candy. I don't even wear earplugs!
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I'm still trying to figure out how they know that I have a small penis...
Aren't you Pauly Shore?
Most of these transactions aren't criminal (Score:2)
Some kinds of transactions are criminal - using stolen credit cards or selling their access information - but most of them are between willing buyers and willing sellers and can't be detected by dogs sniffing email packets at the borders.