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Russian Hacker Gang Vanishes Again

Posted by kdawson on from the now-you-see-'em dept.

Arashtamere writes "The shadowy hacker and malware hosting network that only recently fled Russia to set up operations in China has now pulled the plug there and vanished yet again. An analyst at VeriSign's iDefense Labs unit said iDefense had tracked RBN's migration earlier in the week from servers based in Russia to ones running in China, after obtaining at least seven net blocks of Chinese IP addresses. As of Wednesday, RBN controlled 5,120 IP addresses assigned to Chinese service providers; known RBN clients were even seen using those addresses that day. But with its China move putting the spotlights of the media and the security community on the organization, RBN suddenly went offline on Thursday. 'They severed connections to six of the seven net blocks on November 8,' the analyst said. RBN as a single organization may be dead and gone; it may even now be breaking up into smaller pieces farmed out to multiple countries' Internet infrastructures."

3 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Don't be so fast by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, based in China as I am, I can think of another reason the RBN stayed here for a few days and then quit. The internet connection to the outside world is horribly slow! I regularly get modem speeds when using US-based sites such as slashdot. If file transfers go above 10k/s then I'm ecstatic. I can't imagine that spammers would be happy with slow connections. I had a Nordic businessman ask me for some consulting recently. I talked to him, and he said that the internet was too slow between there and Denmark, and could I fix it? I just rolled my eyes and told him to talk to either Hu Jintao or the Ministry of Propaganda and Information...

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    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  2. Not that bad if you know who to ask... by djupedal · · Score: 2, Informative

    When I moved into an apartment in Shenzhen, the landlord had already initiated internet service. Problem was, it was the entry-level package, and yes, it was slow. If I wanted speed, I had to wait until I went into the office.

    All I had to do was contact China Telecom and ask to move up to the next tier. Throughput was doubled by the afternoon. And my billing dropped by 30% per year. Much better...

  3. Re:Which netblocks? by SIGBUS · · Score: 2, Informative

    Although the list contains more than just RBN-related netblocks, the Spamhaus DROP List is your friend.

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    Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!