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."

Comments

Re:Who Cares?

[Rayban]

Your comment fails to account for:

[x] Laziness on the behalf of the Slashdot readers
[x] Lack of time
[x] Boredom with the same auto-reply form
[ ] Puppies

No authorites needed to enforce a TOS agreement

[mpascal]

If the upstream providers had a service agreement that disallowed the use of their network for illegal activities, they can pull the plug any time.

Re:Who Cares?

[Rayban]

[x] Meh

Re:The entire colo?

[John Hasler]

> I host a few web servers at a colo. I have no idea what my neighbors are serving up. If
> my sites were shut down without notice I'd be pretty unhappy.

Well, then you would sue the colo operator, wouldn't you? They are the ones who contracted to provide you with service. Would you blame the power company if it shut down your colo operator for breaching his contract with it by not paying his bill? Then why blame your colo operator's upstream provider for shutting him down for breaching his contract with them?

Re:Who Cares?

[swamp_ig]

[x] Your mom.

Re:This isn't anywhere near vigilantism

[whoever57]

Actually, no. The "experts" in this case weren't even aware of McColo was actually doing because the few people who did know never shared the information.

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").

Re:Damned plankton eaters

[narcberry]

You can't make an omlette without breaking eggs. I for one, and sick of finding spam in my omlette.

I tried to understand this, I really did.