South Korean ‘Queen Of Spam’ Detained

An online advertiser known as "Queen of Spam" became infamous when the police caught him for playing offensively with Internet users by sending masses of unsolicited e-mail advertisements during 2003 and 2004. The ads canvassed websites offering financial help or pornography. Park, the culprit's true name is 21-years old and lives in Daegu.

Detective Lee Young-Sil confirmed that Park created the notorious software he used, to deliver several trillion spam mails signed under a female name "Kim Ha-na" since 2003.

In 2003, while a high school student, Park developed an exclusive spam program that operated on its own in collecting e-mail addresses that he used to send mass e-mails. Park sold the software to four individuals on the Net for only W 300,000 (US $1=W943) each. The new users quickly started sending waves of ad e-mails, all under the name of Kim Ha-na. Several Internet cafes tried to find ways to stop the spam when the Korea Information Security Agency designed a plan to deal with the problem.

Last spring Park employed himself in a small company in Daegu. In June 2006 he went back to spamming activity along with Kwon as his partner. The two created even more dangerous software. They used it to access 318 servers meant for public and private organizations and configured them as 'hosts', connecting them to form a botnet and dispatching the countless spam messages. Later they developed another program that 'phished' personal information off the e-mail recipients.

Although Park was involved with the Kim Ha-na episode, he was actually arrested for the more recent offense. The police charged him and his accomplice for hacking into the 318 computer servers in order to collect private data of more than 12,000 victims and for sending almost 1.6 billion e-mails over four months during October 2006 to January 2007.

The police set to investigate Park on November 28, 2006. The investigators found Park disguising his IP address over thousands of website. Police unraveled one of his IP in his Daegu apartment where they arrested Park.

The pair can have three years incarceration or $31,000 in fines, if convicted.

Related article: South Korea Becomes Infamous For Being World’s Fifth Spamme

» SPAMfighter News - 2/5/2007