Swedish telco Telia Sonera has shut down the internet
connections of Latvian company Real Host after it waslinked with the world's biggest cybercrime
botnet.
Real Host has been compared to
McColo and
Atrivo, two hosting companies shut down by authorities because
of links to large-scale cybercriminal activities.
Security researcher found that Real Host had rented a large
range of internet addresses from a server provider in Riga called
Junik and was linking to the internet through Telia.
The researchers found that Real Host's servers had captured
around 3.6 million PCs for use in a botnet called
Zeus.
Zeus has been linked to Rock Phish, a Russian-led gang blamed
for half of the world's phishing attacks to steal credit card and
banking information.
Some Real Host sites tried to infect visitors through only
recently patched security holes in Adobe Flash, while others sold
stolen banking data or recruited people to transfer money into
accounts controlled by cybercriminals.