The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday shut down a rogue Internet service provider that recruited, knowingly hosted, and actively broke laws. With the crackdown, the FTC also took down one of the most notorious botnets. According to the FTC, Pricewert LLC participated in the distribution of spam, child pornography, and “other harmful electronic content.” A U.S. District Court judge shut down Pricewert and the businesses it operates, including 3FN and APS Telecom, at the FTC’s request. The ISP’s upstream providers and data centers have disconnected its servers from the Internet. The charges against Pricewert are many. The firm is accused of actively recruiting and colluding with criminals seeking to distribute illegal and malicious content, including child pornography, spyware, viruses, Trojan horses, phishing and pornography featuring violence, bestiality and incest. The FTC alleges the defendant advertised its services in the darkest corners of the Internet, including a forum established to facilitate communication between criminals. Shielding Criminal Clients The FTC’s complaint alleges

Pricewert actively shielded its criminal clients by either ignoring takedown requests from the online security community or shifting its criminal elements to other Internet protocol addresses to evade detection. Pricewert also allegedly engaged operating botnets, large networks of computers that have been compromised and taken over by attackers. Botnets can be used to send spam and launch denial-of-service attacks, among other nefarious purposes. According to the FTC, Pricewert recruited bot herders and hosted the command-and-control servers — the computers that relay commands from the bot herders to the compromised computers known as “zombie drones.” In filings with the district court, the FTC alleges that more than 4,500 malicious software programs are controlled by command-and-control servers hosted by 3FN. This malware includes programs capable of keystroke logging, password stealing, and data stealing, programs with hidden backdoor remote-control activity, and programs involved in spam distribution. Cutting off Cutwail The…

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FTC Shuts Down Notorious ISP That Recruited Criminals