For the first time, the Federal Trade Commission is shuttering an internet service provider it alleges, "recruits, knowingly hosts, and actively participates in the distribution of illegal, malicious and harmful electronic content" such as botnets and child porn.

The company, doing business as 3fn.net and APS Telecom, "actively recruited" to its hosting service thousands of "rogue" and "black hat" web sites distributing "illegal, malicious, and harmful electronic content including child pornography, spyware, viruses, trojan horses, phishing, botnet command and control servers, and pornography featuring violence, bestiality, and incest. "

A San Jose, California federal judge, responding to the FTC's lawsuit, has ordered (.pdf) upstream internet providers and data centers to stop servicing the company, also known as Pricewert, which is based in Oregon. Its operators live in Belize.

The company had thousands of servers in the San Jose area.

Many of the thousands of sites it hosted were based in Russia, where admins on Thursday were scrambling to resume service. The complaint alleges Pricewert officials helped its member sites create and configure botnets.

According to the FTC's lawsuit, (.pdf) the company "hosts very little legitimate content and vast quantities of illegal, malicious, and harmful content, including child pornography, botnet command and control servers, spyware, viruses, trojans, phishing-related sites, illegal online pharmacies, investment and other web-based scams, and pornography featuring violence, bestiality, and incest."

The lawsuit alleges that Pricewert "actively shields its criminal clientele by either ignoring take-down requests issued by the online security community or shifting its criminal clients to other internet protocol addresses controlled by Pricewert so that they may evade detection."

Commission chairman Jonathon Leibowitz told the Washington Post that "Anything bad on the internet, they were involved in it."

Photo: altemark

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