Ukrainian botnet spreading ISP disconnected after FTC’s court filing

On Thursday the Federal Trade Commission said that an Internet service provider who was detected as having links to Eastern Europe was cut off. The ISP was suspected of being behind computer intrusions at NASA and sending massive amounts of malicious spam.

As reported in the court papers Pricewert, which an FTC expert called the "worst ISP in the United States in terms of hosting malicious content," was ordered disconnected on Tuesday, without notification. On Wednesday it was unplugged and the order was unsealed that evening.

In its filing to the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California the FTC said that attacks on NASA computers were traced back to Pricewert computers, including one in April.

"Several of these attacks involved efforts to conscript NASA computers into a botnet," the complaint said.

"Pricewert recruits and colludes with criminals seeking to distribute illegal, malicious and harmful electronic content via the Internet," the FTC said in its complaint. "This content includes a witches' brew of child pornography, botnet command and control servers, spyware, viruses, Trojans, phishing-related sites, and pornography featuring violence, bestiality and incest."

Cybercrooks behind the scheme were not detected by the FTC. Pricewert claims its principal place of business is Belize City. While it claims to be based in the United States, the FTC said all the employees located were in the Ukraine or Estonia.