FTC Shuts Down Less-Than-Ethical ISP - The UpStream

FTC Shuts Down Less-Than-Ethical ISP

posted Saturday May 22, 2010 by Nicholas DiMeo

FTC Shuts Down Less-Than-Ethical ISP

Guess what happens if an ISP hosts and distributes spam, malware and porn? It's going to get shut down, especially if the FTC gets involved! That's exactly what happened with Internet service provider 3FN. Earlier this week, the FTC made a request to a district court judge to shut down the ISP. 3FN's servers and assets were since seized and they have been ordered to pay $1.08 million of it proceeds to the FTC.

This started back in June of 2009, when the Federal Trade Commission initially charged 3FN with actively recruiting and colluding with criminals to distribute e-content such as spyware, viruses, trojans, phishing schemes and child pornography.

The FTC alleged that the defendant advertised its services in the darkest corners of the Internet, including a chat room for spammers.

The FTC went on to say that 3FN was accused of sending out and operating bot herders to deliver malicious email and execute denial-of-service attacks. It also hosted command-and-control servers that communicated the information between the herders and the zombie computers used to mount the attacks.

Because of the vast amount of names that 3FN operated under - Triple Fiber Network, APS Telecom, APX Telecom, APS Communication(s) and Pricewert LLC - it took the FTC almost a year to finally bring them down. 3FN was also able to avoid complete shutdown behind its few legitimate hosting businesses; 3FN would ignore takedown requests and would shuffle IP addresses in order to shade its activity.

The FTC has proof of the illegal practices in instant message logs between some of the senior employees of 3FN. These logs show several of them talking about the processes required to make bot herders operate and how to configure them.

The court has permanently barred 3FN from any operation or activity, as well as any of their affiliates or agents. The court has also assigned a liquidator to take control of the ISP's assets, which will more than likely go towards paying the court-ordered $1.08 million and any outstanding debts.

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