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Spam Gangs and Virus Hordes - Massachusetts Attorney General Cracks Down
From Al Bredenberg's VoIP and CRM Blog
Yesterday this amazing announcement emerged from the office of the Massachusetts Attorney General:
AG Reilly Files Lawsuit, Obtains Emergency Order Shutting Down Internet Spam Gang Believed to Be One of the World�s Largest Spam Operations
AG Tom Reilly filed a lawsuit against someone with the ominous name Leo Kuvayev and six associates. Reilly's office got an emergency court order to shut down two Internet companies run by Kuvayev's outfit and their network of dozens of Web sites allegedly responsible for a massive illegal spam email operation. The AG's office calls Kuvayev the "ring-leader" of the operation and says he supposedly resides in Newton and uses a Boston post office box for a business address.
The two businesses shut down by the AG are 2K Services Ltd. and Ecash Pay Ltd. Besides the two businesses and Kuvayev, Reilly's suit names other associates: Vladislav Khokholkov, Anna Orlova, Pavel Tkachuk, Michelle Marco, Dennis Nartikoev, and Pavel Yashin.
Reilly's office describes Kuvayev's operation as "a complicated web of Internet sites and domain names selling a variety of illegal products including counterfeit drugs, pirated software, pornography, mortgage loans and phony designer watches." Today's release says that officials from Microsoft set up "trap email accounts" in June and July of 2004 to identify the spammers.
Investigators say that Kuvayev's group tried to avoid detection by regularly switching Web sites and domain names. Investigators tracked the operation to Russia, Monaco, Australia, France, China, Korea, Brazil and Taiwan. Kuvayev also recruited a network of affiliates who were compensated for driving traffic to his sites.
Radicati Market Stats regularly reports on email security issues. Their report from yesterday says that they expect that in 2005 "spam traffic will compose 53% of corporate e-mail traffic and 74% of consumer e-mail traffic. In total, spam will comprise 57% of worldwide e-mail traffic." A previous report from the group estimates that worldwide email traffic is 76.8 billion messages a day. At more than half that volume, spam email traffic amounts to a mind-boggling deluge.
Somewhat related as an email security issue is virus traffic. Radicati says worldwide virus traffic is about 900 million messages a day. The source of this plague? "Most viruses are designed to propagate themselves either through e-mail, or by using a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network. In 2005, 86% of viruses used e-mail as a self-propagation medium, while 49% used P2P networks," says Radicati.
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To read Al Bredenberg's VoIP and CRM Blog, please visit:
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/bredenberg-voip-crm/
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