Adconion Execs Plead Guilty in Federal Anti-Spam Case

On the eve of their federal criminal trial for allegedly stealing vast swaths of Internet addresses for use in large-scale email spam campaigns, three current or former executives at online advertising firm Adconion Direct have agreed to plead guilty to lesser misdemeanor charges of fraud and misrepresentation via email. Continue reading Adconion Execs Plead Guilty in Federal Anti-Spam Case

Feds Allege Adconion Employees Hijacked IP Addresses for Spamming

Federal prosecutors in California have filed criminal charges against four employees of Adconion Direct, an email advertising firm, alleging they unlawfully hijacked vast swaths of Internet addresses and used them in large-scale spam campaigns. KrebsOn… Continue reading Feds Allege Adconion Employees Hijacked IP Addresses for Spamming

Dot-cm Typosquatting Sites Visited 12M Times So Far in 2018

A story published here last week warned readers about a vast network of potentially malicious Web sites ending in “.cm” that mimic some of the world’s most popular Internet destinations (e.g. espn[dot]cm, aol[dot]cm and itunes[dot].cm) in a bid to bombard hapless visitors with fake security alerts that can lock up one’s computer. If that piece lacked one key detail it was insight into just how many people were mistyping .com and ending up at one of these so-called “typosquatting” domains.

On March 30, an eagle-eyed reader noted that four years of access logs for the entire network of more than 1,000 dot-cm typosquatting domains were available for download directly from the typosquatting network’s own hosting provider. The logs — which include detailed records of how many people visited the sites over the past three years and from where — were deleted shortly after that comment was posted here, but not before KrebsOnSecurity managed to grab a copy of the entire archive for analysis. Continue reading Dot-cm Typosquatting Sites Visited 12M Times So Far in 2018

Omitting the “o” in .com Could Be Costly

Take care when typing a domain name into a browser address bar, because it’s far too easy to fat-finger a key and wind up somewhere you don’t want to go. For example, if you try to visit some of the most popular destinations on the Web but omit the “o”… Continue reading Omitting the “o” in .com Could Be Costly