After Links To Cybercrime, Latvian ISP Cut Off

alphadogg writes with this Network World story, excerpting "A Latvian ISP linked to online criminal activity has been cut off from the Internet, following complaints from Internet security researchers. Real Host, based in Riga, Latvia was thought to control command-and-control servers for infected botnet PCs, and had been linked to phishing sites, Web sites that launched attack code at visitors and were also home to malicious 'rogue' antivirus products, according to a researcher using the pseudonym Jart Armin, who works on the Hostexploit.com Web site. 'This is maybe one of the top European centers of crap,' he said in an e-mail interview. 'It was a cesspool of criminal activity,' said Paul Ferguson, a researcher with Trend Micro."

Comments

Re:Censorship

[CarpetShark]

That's what I'm thinking too. True freedom is allowing what you DON'T like. I'm more worried about the (admittedly small) possibility that this network was doing good things (too?), like publishing stuff to wikileaks.

If the powers that be can just shut down an ISP citing misbehaviour, then they can silence many customers very quickly. Especially if that ISP is one that a particular subculture preferred (say, for its bandwidth or anonymity).

Leave the politics and legal issues to the governments.

I'd rather leave mundane daily civic duties to the government, and politics to the (informed) people.