Two men have been arrested in South Korea on suspicion
of being involved in one of the country’s biggest spam
incidents.
The men, aged 20 and 26 years old, are alleged to have broken
the law by sending out 1.6 billion spam e-mails between September
and December 2006.
South Korean authorities in Seoul claim that the duo, both
computer programmers, obtained personal and financial information
from 12,000 victims which they then sold to other firms.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at internet security
firm Sophos,
said, "South Korea was revealed in our recent security threat
report as the third-worst nation in the world for relaying spam, so
it's critical that the authorities are cracking down on spammers
based in the country."
In another case, in May 2006, South Korean authorities arrested
a man suspected of running a network of zombie computers or bots,
believed to have been used to send out 18 million spam messages a
day.
Zombie computers are taken over by remote attackers without
their owners knowing, and used to send out spam and malware.
Spam goes into overdrive
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