The Russian Business Network: A Really Bad Network, Who’s to Blame?

The Russian Business Network: A Really Bad Network, Who’s to Blame?

A few months back, I read an interesting article on Washingtonpost.com by Brian Krebs titled “Shadowy Russian Firm Seen as Conduit for Cyber crime”.

The article was very interesting as I learned “The Russian Business Network” (RBN) is a Russian Internet Service Provider known for the hosting of illegal and shady businesses on the web. These businesses include, child pornography, phishing, malware distribution sites and some of the worst spammers on the Internet.

According to experts from Team Cymru, a research group specializing in Internet crime, “The Russian company is linked to about 60% of all cyber crimes”. I also read that businesses that decided take active stance against RBN and their customers were sometimes targeted by denial of service attacks originating in the RBN network.

The business (RBN) is difficult to trace. It is not a registered company, and its domains are registered to anonymous addresses. Its owners are known only by nicknames. It does not advertise, and trades only in untraceable electronic transactions (Economist.com).

Recently, dude to all the attention pertaining to the RBN and there business practices, they all of a sudden closed up shop in December, but reappeared in China a few days later.

But who’s to blame? RBN or its customers? Some would say that RBM is provide hosting services; their customers are apparently the ones violating laws…

This story is no where near over and I will be following it through out the year...