“An international law enforcement action against a large botnet will set an important legal precedent regarding regional Internet IP Address registries,” writes Milton Mueller, Michael van Eeten and Brendon Kuerbis on the Internet Governance Project blog. “At issue is the extent to which an IP address registries can be used as tools of transnational law enforcement.””DNSChanger was a piece of malware that altered the Domain Name System (DNS) settings of computers so that all web page requests coming from those computers would be redirected to nameservers operated by criminals. The illicit DNS nameservers redirected some of their traffic to domains that would generate click-based payments to the perpetrators. DNSChanger is said to have infected about 4 million computers worldwide, and to have generated $14 million in illicit revenues. The Estonia-based group running the scam provoked a complex international, multi-agency investigation, dubbed Operation Ghostclick. The operation culminated in their arrest by Estonian police in early November.”To read the rest of the article by Milton Mueller, Michael van Eeten and Brendon Kuerbis, see:
blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2011/11/23/4944811.html