McColo gone - 3rd 'bad ISP' dissolves...

FYI…

- http://asert.arbornetworks.com/2008/11/thi…es-mccolo-gone/
November 12, 2008 - "The third rogue ISP on our common list of badness sources - McColo - has up and dissolved*. In our own database we have been tracking a few dozen botnets that phoned home to McColo IPs as well as nearly 1000 distinct URLs from hudreds of different malcode samples. These guys ran a dirty operation… No word yet on how many spam zombies are gasping for air. A spot check of my inbox shows little, if any, slow down of spammy badness. With McColo gone off the air, I do not suspect I’ll find little to do in the coming weeks, months, and year, the badness they hosted will simply move…"
* http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityf…ne_scams_a.html
"…heard back from Global Crossing, one of McColo's major Internet providers. Their spokesman declined to discuss the matter… Hurricane Electric took a much stronger public stance: "We shut them down," Ng said. "We looked into it a bit, saw the size and scope of the problem you were reporting and said 'Holy cow! Within the hour we had terminated all of our connections to them"…"

- http://rbnexploit.blogspot.com/2008/11/rbn-mccolo-rip.html

More on this…

- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/12/mccolo_goes_silent/
12 November 2008 - "…According to a host of independent security experts, McColo represented a key link in a notorious chain of other network providers that catered to spammers, botnet operators and malware purveyors. Some researchers claimed McColo provided the connectivity that was responsible for more than half the world's spam. McColo's dissolution was immediately followed by a marked decrease in spam and botnet activity, they said… McColo's demise came as a new report* (PDF) claimed the provider enables a host of bad actors on the internet. In addition to spammers and botnet operators, at least 40 websites, nameservers or payment services used for child pornography were also recently found to be hosted by McColo…"
* http://hostexploit.com/downloads/Hostexplo…02.0%201108.pdf

FYI…

- http://blog.trendmicro.com/spam-volume-plu…plug-on-mccolo/
Nov. 15, 2008 - "…This small victory will most likely be short-lived, as it is almost certain that these obviously profitable criminal operations are too valuable for these criminal operations to be abandoned…"

yet the 20+ spams I was getting have stopped