Verizon Blamed for Overlooking IP Address Pilfering by Spammers

UK and Switzerland situated non-profit organization Spamhaus, which functions to disable intelligence database and lists of malware operations and spam, recently blamed Verizon over channeling Web-traffic during the weekend for the benefit of US-based cyber-criminals.

Barry Branagh of Spamhaus Project stated that Verizon didn't right away examine customers' requests for channeling massive Internet Protocol address blocks registered for individuals within Asia-Pacific. He further observed a trend in which repeated notifications were issued to Verizon regarding the problem during July-December 2014, even as cyber-crime and spam continue to emanate in spite of Verizon employees pledging towards taking action vis-à-vis the situation. SecurityWeek posted this January 12, 2016.

IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) series of addresses that were created earlier are now exhausted globally; therefore, according to Spamhaus, e-mail spammers won't be able to acquire the addresses via legitimate means. Thus, since it's difficult to obtain IPv4 addresses these days, particularly after the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) issued the final Internet Protocol addresses out of the total IPv4 core world pool during February 2011, Internet crooks are now illegally acquiring the same.

It appears that a few ISPs are better watchful compared to others and so catch the con artists plundering their networks. In that line, The Spamhaus Project researchers managed to detect 4m-and-more IP addresses which US cyber-crooks are allegedly using via Verizon Communication's network. Spamhaus notes the IPs channeled through Verizon prove to be the biggest crime committer of the practice called "snowshoe spamming" wherein junk e-mails are proliferated via numerous domains and IPs with the purpose to spread themselves while eluding spam filters.

Furthermore according to Spamhaus researchers, although they aren't sure if ISPs in Korea and China continue to do business, they indeed think probably the ISPs aren't hiring out their Internet Protocol addresses for the benefit of spammers. The greater possibility is that the Internet Protocol addresses got compromised while ISPs, particularly Verizon, were so tricked that they announced those compromised series.

Verizon little responded to the many and repeated complaints of Spamhaus, thus actually facilitating cyber-crime. Consequently, the company may've to do some explaining once law enforcement approaches it.

» SPAMfighter News - 1/19/2016