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McColo Takedown, Vigilantes Or Neighborhood Watch?
CWmike writes "Few tears were shed when alleged spam and malware purveyor McColo was suddenly taken offline last Tuesday by its upstream service providers. But behind the scenes of the McColo case and another recent takedown of Intercage, a ferocious struggle is taking place between the purveyors of Web-based malware and loosely aligned but highly committed groups of security researchers who are out to neutralize them. Backers claim that the effort to shut down miscreant ISPs is needed because of the inability of law enforcement agencies to deal with a problem that is global in nature. But some question whether there is a hint of vigilantism behind the takedowns — even as they acknowledge that there may not be any other viable options for dealing with the problem at this point."
[x] This joke has been run into the ground
[ ] This joke is awesome
I think we're all quite happy that the bastards are staying cockpunched after getting cockpunched by the takedown.
DDos isn't going to do much against a guy with a machine gun. I'd want them to act as a human shield so I could get the fuck out of there. But that's just me.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I just love getting contradicted by people who have no idea of the facts. Hint to mods: do some research before up-moddng!
Some evidence to support my position: McColo, a Californian-based company played house to some of the world's worst online criminal gangs and was booted off the internet following an investigation by Washington Post security researcher Brian Krebs. The company's online presence was extinguished after Krebs alerted McColo's access providers Global Crossing and Hurricane Electric earlier this week to the criminal material it was pumping out over their networks .
Or how about this: McColo's termination followed closely on the heels of an incendiary report released by researchers from numerous security organizations and companies, including McAfee, Trend Micro and Arbor Networks, detailing shady criminal practices of ISPs like McColo and their connection with spam and cybercrime.
So it wasn't due to unanswered complaints sent to upstream providers, it was because upstream providers were notified of the issues by security researchers (to whom I referred as "experts").
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
You bring up an excellent point. In response, I have edited my google.xml search file (C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins\google.xml) thus:
Old values:
New Values: