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May 24, 2005

Master of his domains

A press release Monday from the Massachusetts Attorney General suggests the recent legal action against Russian spammer Leo Kuvayev is producing results.

The AG claims more than 250 domains belonging to the "Internet Spam Gang" have been shut down. (I don't know why the AG's office calls them that; Kuvayev's operation is known as the Russian Spam Gang or RSG for short.)

But other evidence suggests the Russian Spam Gang is still quite alive, if not well.

Darren Brothers, the anti-spammer who created the controversial Spam Vampire, has found a site selling blackmarket software that's a carbon copy of one of Kuvayev's sites -- and it's even located at an IP address associated with the RSG. (There are 48 live domains at that IP, all offering cracked software or "super Viagra.")

A while back, Brothers compiled a list of 1,054 RSG domains. Most of them are throw-away domains with names like JBLDJHC.INFO. For whatever reason, most on the list currently appear to be offline.

Shutting down a spammer's domains definitely inconveniences the operation. But it's all just a cost of doing business for hard core spammers like Kuvayev and the RSG.

Posted by brian at May 24, 2005 1:34 PM