Illegal ISP “3FN.net” Ordered to Shutdown

Ronald M. Whyte, Judge of a U.S. District Court, has ordered 3FN.net, an Internet Service Provider, to permanently close shop. The judgment follows a request from the U.S. FTC (Federal Trade Commission), which charged 3FN.net of carrying out illegal activities under another name, Pricewert.

The judgment also requires that 3FN.net sell off all assets as well as surrender over $1 Million amassed as illicit profits.

According to an elaborate report, the FTC initially accused 3FN in June 2009 regarding several extremely unfavorable actions, including constant hiring of cyber-criminals as well as working with them for distributing Trojans, spyware, pornography, especially child porn, and phishing campaigns. FTC observed that the ISP promoted its services among people with similar interest across the Internet's "darkest corners" such as spammers' chat rooms.

It also charged 3FN with installing and running botnets as well as recruiting bot-herders for dispatching junk e-mails and launching DOS assaults. Moreover, 3FN provided hosting services for the central C&C servers, which supported communication between the bot-controllers and the compromised PCs that executed assaults.

Said FTC, while 3FN did host some businesses legitimately, it also carried out illegitimate hosting, as it protected its clients and associates who were engaged in unlawful operations. For that, the Commission claimed, the ISP overlooked shutdown requests as well as rearranged the Internet Protocol addresses for its malicious activities.

In fact, FTC's lawyers presented numerous clues to prove their allegations. These included transcripts of IM (instant messages) from top-ranking staff of 3FN along with logs from NASA computer-servers, which displayed assaults arising from IP addresses that 3FN regulated. The lawyers also presented reports based on different individuals' findings to further support their arguments. These people were Gary Warner, computer-forensics expert at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Inspector-General at NASA, and researchers from Symantec and Spamhaus.

Thus, Judge Whyte stated in his verdict that all these experts had assessed their findings that proved that 3FN.net (defendant) executed widespread illegal operations. PCWorld.com reported this on May 19, 2010. Whyte added that it was hardly doubtful based on the details presented that Pricewert operated mainly as an ISP for unlawful business.

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» SPAMfighter News - 5/29/2010