Spammers Hacked Machines from Microsoft's (Linux?)Network

Posted by henke54 on Oct 14, 2010 11:34 AM EDT
news.softpedia.com; By Lucian Constantin
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But, there is more to this story. Reputed information security investigative journalist Brian Krebs reports that one of the two Microsoft IP addresses was involved in a denial of service attack against his website on September 23. According to him, the owner of his Web hosting provider, who is also a co-founder of the SURBL (Spam URL Blocklist) project, notified Microsoft about the possible compromise of its systems, hours after the attack. It's not very clear why Microsoft failed to properly investigate the report at the time and allowed the abuse to continue on its network for another three weeks. The websites promoted a rogue online pharmacy known as "Canadian Health&Care Mall," which is believed to be associated with a spam affiliate program called Bulker.biz. One thing the Bulker.biz gang is known for, is compromising poorly configured Linux or UNIX-like systems and using in their operations. By routing traffic through these servers, which use the IP addresses of well known organizations and companies, the spammers can evade various blocklists. This connection points to a high likelihood that Microsoft's compromised network hardware devices were running some Linux flavor.

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Ron Guilliamette involved! phsolide 2 1,410 Oct 15, 2010 11:52 PM

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