Category Archives: Spam Nation

Unproven Coronavirus Therapy Proves Cash Cow for Shadow Pharmacies

Posted on by

Many of the same shadowy organizations that pay people to promote male erectile dysfunction drugs via spam and hacked websites recently have enjoyed a surge in demand for medicines used to fight malaria, lupus and arthritis, thanks largely to unfounded suggestions that these therapies can help fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

A review of the sales figures from some of the top pharmacy affiliate programs suggests sales of drugs containing hydroxychloroquine rivaled that of their primary product — generic Viagra and Cialis — and that this as-yet-unproven Coronavirus treatment accounted for as much as 25 to 30 percent of all sales over the past month. Continue reading Unproven Coronavirus Therapy Proves Cash Cow for Shadow Pharmacies→

Feds Allege Adconion Employees Hijacked IP Addresses for Spamming

Posted on by

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→

Alleged Spam Kingpin ‘Severa’ Extradited to US

Posted on by

Peter Yuryevich Levashov, a 37-year-old Russian computer programmer thought to be one of the world’s most notorious spam kingpins, has been extradited to the United States to face federal hacking and spamming charges.

Levashov, who allegedly went by the hacker name “Peter Severa,” or “Peter of the North,” hails from St. Petersburg in northern Russia, but he was arrested last year while in Barcelona, Spain with his family.

Authorities have long suspected he is the cybercriminal behind the once powerful spam botnet known as Waledac (a.k.a. “Kelihos”), a now-defunct malware strain responsible for sending more than 1.5 billion spam, phishing and malware attacks each day. Continue reading Alleged Spam Kingpin ‘Severa’ Extradited to US→

Alleged Spam Kingpin ‘Severa’ Extradited to US

Posted on by

Peter Yuryevich Levashov, a 37-year-old Russian computer programmer thought to be one of the world’s most notorious spam kingpins, has been extradited to the United States to face federal hacking and spamming charges.

Levashov, who allegedly went by the hacker name “Peter Severa,” or “Peter of the North,” hails from St. Petersburg in northern Russia, but he was arrested last year while in Barcelona, Spain with his family.

Authorities have long suspected he is the cybercriminal behind the once powerful spam botnet known as Waledac (a.k.a. “Kelihos”), a now-defunct malware strain responsible for sending more than 1.5 billion spam, phishing and malware attacks each day. Continue reading Alleged Spam Kingpin ‘Severa’ Extradited to US→

Alleged Spam King Pyotr Levashov Arrested

Posted on by

Authorities in Spain have arrested a Russian computer programmer thought to be one of the world’s most notorious spam kingpins.

Spanish police arrested Pyotr Levashov under an international warrant executed in the city of Barcelona, according to Reuters. Russian state-run television station RT (formerly Russia Today) reported that Levashov was arrested while vacationing in Spain with his family.

According to numerous stories here at KrebsOnSecurity, Levashov was better known as “Severa,” the hacker moniker used by a pivotal figure in many popular Russian-language cybercrime forums. Severa was the moderator for the spam subsection of multiple online communities, and in this role served as the virtual linchpin connecting virus writers with huge spam networks that Severa allegedly created and sold himself. Continue reading Alleged Spam King Pyotr Levashov Arrested→

A Shakeup in Russia’s Top Cybercrime Unit

Posted on by

A chief criticism I heard from readers of my book, Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime, was that it dealt primarily with petty crooks involved in petty crimes, while ignoring more substantive security issues like government surveillance and cyber war. But now it appears that the chief antagonist of Spam Nation is at the dead center of an international scandal involving the hacking of U.S. state electoral boards in Arizona and Illinois, the sacking of Russia’s top cybercrime investigators, and the slow but steady leak of unflattering data on some of Russia’s most powerful politicians. Continue reading A Shakeup in Russia’s Top Cybercrime Unit→

A Shakeup in Russia’s Top Cybercrime Unit

Posted on by

A chief criticism I heard from readers of my book, Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime, was that it dealt primarily with petty crooks involved in petty crimes, while ignoring more substantive security issues like government surveillance and cyber war. But now it appears that the chief antagonist of Spam Nation is at the dead center of an international scandal involving the hacking of U.S. state electoral boards in Arizona and Illinois, the sacking of Russia’s top cybercrime investigators, and the slow but steady leak of unflattering data on some of Russia’s most powerful politicians. Continue reading A Shakeup in Russia’s Top Cybercrime Unit→

The Download on the DNC Hack

Posted on by

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been inundated with questions from readers asking why I haven’t written much about two stories that have consumed the news media of late: The alleged Russian hacking attacks against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and, more recently, the discovery of malware on a laptop at a Vermont power utility that has been attributed to Russian hacker groups. I’ve avoided covering these stories mainly because I don’t have any original reporting to add to them, and because I generally avoid chasing the story of the day — preferring instead to focus on producing original journalism on cybercrime and computer security. Continue reading The Download on the DNC Hack→

FBI Raids Spammer Outed by KrebsOnSecurity

Posted on by

Michael A. Persaud, a California man profiled in a Nov. 2014 KrebsOnSecurity story about a convicted junk email artist currently identified by anti-spam activists as one of the world’s Top 10 Worst Spammers, was reportedly raided by the FBI in connection with a federal spam investigation. Continue reading FBI Raids Spammer Outed by KrebsOnSecurity→

Got $90,000? A Windows 0-Day Could Be Yours

Posted on by

How much would a cybercriminal, nation state or organized crime group pay for blueprints on how to exploit a serious, currently undocumented, unpatched vulnerability in all versions of Microsoft Windows? That price probably depends on the power of the exploit and what the market will bear at the time, but here’s a look at one convincing recent exploit sales thread from the cybercrime underworld where the current asking price for a Windows-wide bug that allegedly defeats all of Microsoft’s current security defenses is USD $90,000. Continue reading Got $90,000? A Windows 0-Day Could Be Yours→