[Eug-lug] NYTimes.com Article: Dozens Charged in Crackdown on Spam and Scams

[knghtbrd at bluecherry.net]

The article below from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by knghtbrd at bluecherry.net.


This is the first media mention I've seen of viruses causing random winboxes to start spewing spam.

knghtbrd at bluecherry.net


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Dozens Charged in Crackdown on Spam and Scams

August 25, 2004
 By SAUL HANSELL 



 

Federal and state law enforcement agencies have quietly
arrested or charged dozens of people with crimes related to
junk e-mail, identity theft and other online scams in
recent weeks, according to several people involved in the
actions. 

The cases, which have been brought by law enforcement
offices around the country, are expected to be announced by
Attorney General John Ashcroft in a news conference in
Washington on Thursday. 

Federal authorities have stepped up their efforts to crack
down on junk e-mail messages, or spam, since Congress
passed a law last December criminalizing fraudulent and
deceptive e-mail practices. The law subjects spammers to
fines and jail terms of up to five years. 

So far, the law has had little noticeable effect. Spam
represents 65 percent of all e-mail, up from 58 percent
when the law was passed, according to Symantec, a company
that makes a widely used spam filter. 

The new cases are also expected to involve charges of
credit card fraud, computer crime and other offenses that
carry significant penalties. Many of the cases were
developed by an unusual investigative team that combined
federal law enforcement officials and executives from
industries that do business through the Internet. Nearly
two dozen investigators work in an office in Pittsburgh
operated by the National Cyber-Forensics and Training
Alliance, a nonprofit organization with close ties to the
Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

Much of the financing for the efforts, known as Operation
Slam Spam, comes from the Direct Marketing Association, a
trade group that wants to promote what it sees as the
legitimate use of e-mail marketing. 

"We felt that the key to the new law was enforcement," said
H. Robert Wientzen, who recently stepped down as the
president of the marketing association and is still
involved in the antispam campaign. "We want spammers to
realize that spam is not a free game for them and that they
face real penalties if they continue." 

The operation has built a database of known spammers,
drawing from law enforcement agencies and from private
companies that are investigating and bringing civil suits
against some of the biggest users of junk e-mail messages.
It has also deployed online decoys to catch spammers and
has purchased products advertised in spam messages so that
the financial records can be traced to the ultimate source
of the message. 

As the cases have been developed, the Pittsburgh group has
used its information to persuade prosecutors to devote some
resources to bringing cases against junk e-mail companies
and other abusers of the Internet. 

Law enforcement agencies have only recently taken an
interest in fighting the spam problem. It is a series of
small crimes, often without clear victims, that is hard to
investigate. 

But prosecutors and investigators are starting to become
more aggressive as the volume of spam continues to increase
and as the messages that spammers send are being used more
often to perpetrate other crimes, including identity theft
and credit card fraud. 

And the authorities have become increasingly concerned
about the spammers' use of computer viruses to hijack
millions of desktop computers, using them to relay their
messages and hide their true identities. 

The Justice Department announcement expected on Thursday is
meant to highlight several different government actions
related to computer crime. The department has conducted a
handful of similar operations in the past, calling them
cyber sweeps, but the crackdown to be disclosed this week
is thought to be the biggest by far. 

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. 

In
May, Jana D. Monroe, assistant director of the F.B.I.'s
cyber division, told a Senate committee that the agency was
developing cases on more than 50 of the most active
spammers. 

Prosecutors had hoped to announce some prominent
convictions earlier this summer. But the cases have proven
to be more complex than expected, in part because of new
evidence turned up at each step. 

"These cases never end," said Steve Linford, the director
of the Spamhaus Project, a clearinghouse of information on
spammers based in London that works with law enforcement
agencies. "When they seize a whole bunch of computers from
one gang, they normally see a lot of information that leads
to another gang." 

Indeed, federal and state prosecutors have arrested some
people whose names they will not reveal at the news
conference this week because those first suspects are
leading them to others involved in spam and other crimes,
officials said. 

In April, the Justice Department brought what it said was
the first criminal prosecution under the new spam law
against three people in suburban Detroit. Last month,
however, the case was quietly dismissed at the government's
request. 

Terrence Berg, the prosecutor on the case, said such
dismissals were normal procedure and the charges could be
brought again after more evidence was developed. 

Spam has proven to be a plague of the modern world that has
defied nearly every effort to mitigate its effects. Major
companies and Internet providers have spent millions of
dollars on software meant to identify and discard unwanted
messages, but the spammers have found myriad techniques to
get around the barriers. 

Efforts to develop technical standards that would help
separate "good" e-mail from "bad" have been delayed by
bickering among the big e-mail providers. 

It is unclear whether the heightened spate of criminal
prosecutions will make much difference in the in-boxes of
the half-billion e-mail users around the world. 

"There is such a large number of spammers,'' said Enrique
Salem, a senior vice president of Symantec, "that no matter
how many you arrest, more people will send spam.'' 

But Mr. Linford of Spamhaus said he thought that the
current wave of prosecutions had the potential to at least
temporarily diminish the flood of spam. 

"Spammers believe that they will never be caught,'' Mr.
Linford said. "If they get 10, 20, 30 well-known spammers,
the rest of the spam community will start to notice. Any
spammers who can be made to give up because they think the
F.B.I. is getting too close is very good for us.'' 

Still, Mr. Linford added that spam activity had been
increasing overseas and that spammers in other countries,
especially Russia, were expected to move quickly to fill
any gaps left if spammers in the United States are shut
down or scared off. 

"Next year and the year after,'' he said, "we are going to
see Russia as the main spam problem.'' 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/25/technology/25spam.html?ex=1094433687&ei=1&en=8cdb08826ce32a2a


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