The Russian Business Network: web host specializes in hosting cybercriminals

[mandy]

An Internet business based in St. Petersburg has become a world hub for Web sites devoted to child pornography, spamming and identity theft, according to computer security experts. They say Russian authorities have provided little help in efforts to shut down the company.

The Russian Business Network sells Web site hosting to people engaged in criminal activity, the security experts say.

Groups operating through the company's computers are thought to be responsible for about half of last year's incidents of "phishing" -- ID-theft scams in which cybercrooks use e-mail to lure people into entering personal and financial data at fake commerce and banking sites.

One group of phishers, known as the Rock Group, used the company's network to steal about $150 million from bank accounts last year, according to a report by VeriSign...

full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...61_pf.html

[Kristijntje]

Update:

A major Russian Internet service provider whose client list amounted to a laundry list of organized cyber crime operations appears to have closed shop. But security experts caution that there are signs that the highly profitable network may already be building a new home for itself elsewhere on the Web.

The Russian Business Network, an ISP and Web hosting provider long based in St. Petersburg, Russia, this week relinquished most of its allocated Internet addresses after a number of its main upstream Internet providers severed ties with the group...

full article: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityf..._down.html