Spam 'mother ship' shut down in U.S.

A web hosting company reportedly responsible for the distribution of 75 per cent of all junk e-mail has been shut down.

Servers owned by McColo Corp. in California were no longer operating as of Tuesday evening, according to Hostexploit.com — a security blog edited by Jart Armin and Jim McQuaid.

"This clearly demonstrates that, when presented with the appropriate evidence of criminal activity, the internet community can bring about the positive forces necessary to purge it," they wrote in the blog.

The Washington Post reported the servers have allegedly been used for criminal ends, including for child pornography and identity theft.

"Multiple security researchers have recently published data naming McColo as a mother ship for all of the top robot networks or 'botnets,' which are vast collections of hacked computers that are networked together to blast out spam or attack others online," the paper said in a report published Wednesday.

A U.K. security firm estimates botnets that use McColo distribute about 75 per cent of spam sent daily, according to the report.

[link to www.cbc.ca]