Spam wall
Originally uploaded by freezelight

If you’ve noticed that overnight, you’ve gotten fewer V1agr4 emails, you have Brian Krebs of the Washington Post to thank. See, as part of the Security Fix blog, he’s been tracking down a lot of malware networks, a lot of spammers and a lot of kiddie porn traffickers. About 75% of the spam networks can trace their core servers and services back to a single server co-location facility in San Jose, called McColo.

And yesterday, his work took McColo’s internet connections offline.

“But within hours of being presented with evidence from the security community about illegal activity coming from McColo’s network, the two largest Internet providers for the company decided to pull the plug on McColo late Tuesday.”

So, if you noticed a major drop-off in Spam, overnight, then you have Brian Krebs to thank. The story from Krebs is literally months of investigative journalism that is sorely lacking in our modern media, and is a fantastic read, to boot. You can also check out Security Fix for more information on the event, as well as read about the overnight drop in spam and malware traffic.

Congrats, Brian Krebs! I suspect you’ll have a lot of sysadmins in this town raising a glass in your honor today.

Tom Bridge

I live and work in the District of Columbia. I write at We Love DC, a blog I helped start, I work at Technolutionary, a company I helped start, and I’m happy doing both. I enjoy watching baseball, cooking, and gardening. I grow a mean pepper, keep a clean scorebook, and wash the dishes when I’m done. Read Why I Love DC.