November 17, 2008: After years of
efforts by Internet security firms and volunteer "white hat" (the
good guys) hackers, governments are forcing ISPs (Internet Service Providers)
to stop providing essential access for Internet criminals. The most recent
take-down, of ISP McColo Corporation, caused worldwide spam traffic to decline
by over 50 percent in one day. In the past year, two other similar ISPs, the
Russian Business Network and Intercage, had similar, but not as dramatic,
impact on spam traffic, and Internet based criminal activity in general, when
they were shut down.
The basic tactic here was to compile a
report of the known criminal activity being conducted via a particular ISP, and
then present it to police authorities (like the FBI in the U.S.). What made
this work was that evidence was found that child pornography sites were hosted
on places like McColo. While ISPs cannot be held legally responsible for most customer
activity, copyright infringement and child pornography are two things the ISP
can be prosecuted for it they know it's on their servers, and do nothing about
it. While the ISPs doing the hosting, like McColo, will play games with the
authorities (moving the criminal sites to another server, or shutting them down
and then letting them start again under a different name), you can take the
same evidence to the ISPs that "peer" (connect to) the offending ISP,
and get them to disconnect with the offending ISP. Since the Internet is a
network of networks, if an ISP cannot connect to the "web" of
thousands of ISPs (especially the major ones), they are not connected to the Internet.
That's how McColo, the Russian Business Network and Intercage got shut down.
And that's how new ISPs, specializing in supporting criminals, will get shut
down.
The Internet has become a battlefield
between evil hackers (the black hats) and their equally determined opponents
the good hackers (the white hats). The battle often involves military sites,
and national security. It's no accident. The Internet was designed so that it
would be invulnerable in nuclear war. The net software was put together in the
open, often by volunteers. Few of the net's authors thought their creation
would become a worldwide electronic superhighway with more than a billion
users.
Internet crime, particularly spam
(unsolicited email) has become a big money maker. Because of the very low cost
of sending it, you need only one response for several million spam messages, to
make lots of money. But the same ISPs that host the spammers, also host
operations that try to sneak into business, government and personal computers
to steal stuff (bank account information, trade secrets, classified military
information). As much as the bad guys try to find places to hide, they tend to
congregate at unscrupulous ISPs that will charge a bit extra, and look the
other way. Now these rogue ISPs are under attack, and this will slow down the Internet
bandits, and increase their cost of doing business. The chase is on, and the
good guys are not going to give up.
