The Federal Trade Commission won a preliminary legal victory against what it called one of the largest spam gangs on the Internet, persuading a federal court in Chicago on Tuesday to freeze the group’s assets and order the spam network to shut down. The group, which used several names but was known among spam-fighting organizations as HerbalKing, sent billions of unsolicited messages to Internet users over the last 20 months, promoting replica watches and a variety of pharmaceuticals, including weight-loss drugs and herbal pills that supposedly enhanced the male anatomy, according to the commission. To pepper Internet users with its solicitations, the HerbalKing group used a botnet, a global network of computers infected with malicious software, often without the knowledge of their owners.
The security firm Marshal Software, which assisted the F.T.C. with the investigation, estimated in court documents that the group’s Mega-D botnet — named after one of its pill products — was made up of 35,000 computers and could send 10 billion e-mail messages a day. In January, the botnet was the leading source of spam on the Internet, the firm estimated. F.T.C. investigators also said they monitored the group’s finances closely and that it cleared $400,000 in Visa charges in one month alone. The commission has brought more than 100 cases against spammers and spyware vendors over the past decade. But officials and investigators said this spam operation was perhaps the most extensive they had ever encountered, with ties to Australia, New Zealand, India, China and the United States.
Source: NY Times
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